LATIN AMERICAN MARKET REPORT
Brazil will start to turn around and in two years will be showing certain growth in GDP, and major indicators like inflation and unemployment will be more stable.” He said the green shoots of
recovery have been stimulated by important geopolitical reforms such as a cap on federal expenses on government investments. Urioste admits political and
economic turbulence in the country beginning in 2015 – which culminated in the corruption scandal dubbed ‘Operation Car Wash’ and the consequent impeachment of then-President Dilma Rousseff – hit sales at Neutral, where it slid from positive growth in February 2015 to -60% in March of the same year. As reported in detail by TRBusiness
at the time, Neutral – like many other duty free operators in South America – felt the effects of a hard landing in March 2015, due to a combination of factors such as a marked depreciation in the Brazilian real, plummeting commodity prices, and a squeeze on consumer credit card purchases. “If you’re working in Latin America
you need to know two things: one, you are riding a rollercoaster and two, hope to know if you are on the downside or upside you don’t lose time to recover,” he cautioned. Its portfolio of nine border stores
are strategically positioned on key access routes on the Brazil/
Uruguay border in the cities of Rivera (home to its flagship Melancia Mall), Artigas, Aceguá, Rio Branco, Chuy, and Bella Union on the Argentinian/Uruguay border. Urioste adds that he is confident
the economies of Brazil and Argentina, which ‘hopefully will have made maco-economic adjustments’ will grow this year.
No more ‘big surprises’? Rafael Parodi, Manager of Projects for Uruguay’s Siñeriz Group, also tells TRBusiness that the business has steadily been improving since the second quarter of 2016, following a very turbulent trading period in 2015. Parodi – who will be presenting at
the ASUTIL conference in Rio – told TRBusiness in an exclusive interview that he believes that consumers are becoming more confident and have started travelling back to Uruguay in greater numbers once more. Off the back of this stronger
performance in the second half of last year, Parodi has reason to believe that this year will be even better than 2016. “I have no doubts that 2017 will be much better than 2016,” he says. “It already started strong and as we can see the local economy is recovering very fast.” Last year, the company told
TRBusiness in an exclusive interview that uncertainty in the global economy was badly affecting businesses in Latin America – not
“I believe 2017 will be a year when Brazil will start to turn around and in two years will be showing certain growth in GDP, and major indicators like inflation and unemployment will be more stable.”
Enrique Urioste, CEO Neutral Duty Free
just the travel retail operators. But as Parodi points out, 2017 has started more positively and importantly he says that he doesn’t think the region can expect any more ‘big surprises’. Intelligently, during the ‘crisis’ in
2015 Siñeriz focused on reorganising its organisation and readying itself for when the market would pick up. “During that time we tried to find
opportunities to grow and reorganise when the market was stagnant. So now that the market is recovering we have a large advantage compared to the market overall.” «
Neutral Duty Free’s flagship Melancia Mall near Rivera.
LatAm airport news: Mexico’s ASUR to take control of 12 Colombian airports ASUR, the operator of Cancun Airport
Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASUR), the first privatised airport group in Mexico has signed agreements to acquire the controlling interest in two Colombian airport groups, Airplan, S.A. (Airplan) and Aeropuertos de Oriente S.A.S. (Oriente) which manage 12 airports in Colombia between them.
and eight other airports in southeast Mexico, also operates Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan and is a 50% JV partner in Aerostar Airport Holdings, LLC. Airplan operates the following
airports in Colombia: Enrique Olaya Herrera Airport and José María Córdova International Airport in Medellín; Los Garzones Airport in Montería; Antonio Roldán Betancourt Airport in Carepa; El Caraño Airport in Quibdó and Las Brujas Airport in Corozal. Oriente has concessions to operate
Jose Maria Cordova airport. JUNE 2017
the following airports in Colombia: Simón Bolivar International Airport in Santa Marta; Almirante Padilla
Airport in Riohacha; Alfonso López Pumarejo Airport in Valledupar; Camilo Daza International Airport in Cúcuta; Palonegro International Airport in Bucaramanga and Yariguíes Airport in Barrancabermeja. Following completion of the
acquisitions, ASUR will own approximately 92.42% of the capital stock of Airplan and 97.26% of the capital stock of Oriente. In 2016, the airports operated by
Airplan and Oriente served approximately 10.4m passengers and 5.2m passengers, respectively. The concessions held by Airplan and Oriente have a term depending on the amount of revenues generated by the relevant airports.
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