☀ Domingo Brief — Brazil’s 5G growth, Uruguay’s US opportunity, & Argentina’s IMF progress

Each Sunday, take two minutes to catch key stories and opportunities shaping Latin America.

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Welcome back to the Domingo Brief! This week, we're diving into a Brazilian-Colombian joint venture to shake up the investment world, 5G expansion, and a potential trade deepening between Uruguay and the United States.

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Trivia of the Week

A whopping 70% of you correctly answered that Bolivia lost its coastline in the 19th century. The War of the Pacific (1879-1884) was a major South American war which saw Chile defeat a Bolivian-Peruvian alliance. In the resulting peace, Chile annexed the resource-rich region surrounding the port of Antofagasta, and Bolivia subsequently lost maritime access. It is one of only two landlocked countries in all of Latin America—the other, Paraguay, was the runner-up guess with 22% of votes cast.

Each week, tune back in for the answer to the previous week’s trivia question. No cheating!

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🇦🇷 Argentina will be pushing its International Monetary Fund (IMF) repayments to the end of July. The country owes $2.6B for this month, of which $1.3B was due on Friday. Argentina did the same bundling move last month, and also notably paid a piece in Chinese yuan owing to its low dollar reserves. Both moves are allowed under the terms of the deal.

Latinometrics: South America’s 2nd-largest economy owes $44B under a loan deal it reached last year with the D.C.-based international multilateral institution. The country has struggled to repay this year owing to a severe drought, subsequent fall in soy exports, and a dearth of foreign reserves.

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🇧🇷 Brazil’s 5G launch is roughly 5x ahead of schedule, one year after the start of installations. The three largest telecoms operators in the country — Vivo, Claro, and Tim — were supposed to have just shy of 2K radio base operations by now. Instead, nearly 10K have already been established around the country. Roughly 70M Brazilians live in municipalities with access to 5G’s higher connection speeds, something attributable to the healthy competition which pits different telecom firms against each other to reach the most customers.