BUS-260: Business Communication

BMI View: Chile's construction industry is due to record a bumper year in 2011. While we do not anticipate this high growth rate to be sustained, we do believe that our robust and consistent growth outlook will ensure continued investor interest, and therefore ensure Chile remains our favorite Latin American infrastructure market...

Chapter 3 explores the underlying supply-side and demand-side drivers of the trends in premia. It documents the recent expansion of education coverage in LCR, benchmarks it against other regions, and presents an in-depth analysis of the relative importance of shifts in the supply and demand for skills in generating declining earnings premia. Using a methodological approach first developed by Katz and Murphy, it concludes that demand-side changes appear to be the critical factor. It also analyzes the role of institutional factors, finding that minimum wages also have likely played an important role in the compression of labor earnings.

Chile Labour Market Risk Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, banking associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence.

BMI View: The revision of the entire historical data series for Columbia's construction industry value has prompted us to amend our data and our forecasts for the construction and infrastructure sectors. However, we maintain that the trends we expected to emerge in the infrastructure market will be evident - with infrastructure the stronger performer in the industry, buoyed by the ports, roads and energy & utilities sectors. The contraction that we had pencilled in for 2010 did not materialise according to the new data, although there was a marked slowdown in real growth. This could be due to the lapsing of the Colombian government's 2009 infrastructure stimulus plan. Over the long term we maintain a positive outlook for the Colombian infrastructure sector. This is due to a number of factors: * An attractive business environment. * A government committed to high levels of infrastructure investment. * Several large scale projects planned, such as the Hidroituango power plant, Oleoducto Bicentenario oil pipeline and the Bogota Metro...

Investors considering basing a business in Colombia stand to benefit from a large, urbanised and relatively healthy labour force that is particularly suited to businesses in labour-intensive, low-skilled sectors. Government efforts to improve general education and a strong tertiary education sector are improving the skill set of a segment of the labour force, which is growing from a low base. Currently, however, there is a shortage of technical skills generally, which is coupled with uncompetitive labour taxes that increase costs for businesses wishing to employ workers with higher skills.

Underpinned by the advance of a number of major public works projects concentrated in the transportation sector, Panama's construction sector will remain a growth outperformer regionally in 2018 and 2019 before decelerating over the remainder of our ten-year forecast period.

Economic statistics; Per capita; Poverty; Unemployment; Income distribution; Quality of life

Economic statistics; Productivity; Foreign investment; Per capita; Poverty; Unemployment.

One of Peru's greatest charms as a country - its extraordinarily dramatic and varied landscape - has also proven one of the greatest challenges to its economic development. The tapestry of river towns wreathed by Amazonian jungle, far-flung, mist-shrouded mountain settlements and desert pueblos means large portions of Peru have for decades been virtually cut off from one another. It is no surprise that recent governments in Peru have made strengthening the country's infrastructure a high priority.