Argentina

GDP growth: 4.0%
GDP: $470bn (PPP: $754bn)
Inflation: 9.6%
Population: 41.3m
GDP per head: $11,380 (PPP: $18,260)

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner will start 2012 with a fresh mandate following elections in late 2011, but this will be a quite different administration. Fiscal breathing space afforded by a commodities boom is close to exhaustion—the more so if global economic conditions worsen, bringing commodity prices down. Even if commodity prices stay high, the economy will slow as policy tightens to address inflation and exchange-rate distortions.

To watch: Painless. The World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists will hold its four-yearly World Congress in Buenos Aires.