LatAm countries agree on strategies to tide over economic crisis

SANTIAGO, Dec 13 (Xinhua): Finance ministers from Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay Monday agreed to boost measures to mitigate the effects of the global economic crisis. The ministers agreed to increase liquidity and public investment, improve fiscal accounts, and push through reforms to face the crisis effects. "We have established a plan of economic incentive to increase two percentage points of the GDP, which will be implemented in the next year," Peru's Finance Minister Luis Miguel Castilla told the media after the meeting here. The proposal, which has been included in the budget, includes an additional boost to infrastructure projects. Casilla said infrastructure investment should help mitigate the slowdown of the private sectors caused by a lower global growth. Casilla said it is important to keep healthy fiscal accounts. "This year we have to close with a surplus of 2 per cent in the GDP and the next year the projection might be a reduction in the surplus and balanced accounts."