What's going to happen in 2006?

This is our final effort at forecasting what is happening in the region's economies this year and our first stab at forecasting what will happen in 2006. We are making the forecasts in late September. The first point to make about 2006 is that it is an election year: Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Peru, as well as smaller economies such as Costa Rica and Honduras, all go to the polls next year. All the elections are, at this point, fairly open. Colombia's incumbent president, Alvaro Uribe, has an 80% rating in the opinion polls but the expectation is that constitutional court will bar him from running, throwing the election wide open. In Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador heads the opinion polls, but has yet to break above 40%: this may happen when his opponents are chosen and electors start to choose between real, rather than hypothetical, alternatives. In Brazil, the general assumption that President Lula da Silva would win a second turn is looking shaky. We believe that he will run and will win, on the back of his successful economic policy. 

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