Brazil unveils USD 57 billionn agri loan programme

EFE, 06/29/2012

President Dilma Rousseff Thursday unveiled a 115-billion-reais (USD 57 billion) loan programme aimed at reinforcing agriculture’s role as a lever of Brazilian economic growth.

Rousseff defined the plan for the 2012-13 season as “a new tool against the global crisis” that will underpin the government’s efforts to create employment and mitigate the effects of economic turmoil abroad.

“This plan will show that Brazil is one of the few countries that can create new jobs amid the very serious sovereign debt crisis affecting the world,” she said during the ceremony at the Planalto presidential palace, describing agriculture as a strategic sector.

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Brazil, Latin America hit by Asia, Europe crisis

USA Today/The Associated Press, 06/12/2012

RIO DE JANEIRO – For more than a decade, Brazil has been one of the developing world’s great hopes, outpacing the growth of Western Europe and the United States. Many even predicted it would soon become an economic superpower.

Now, as the world economy teeters, Brazil is looking less like a global golden child and more like a Latin American laggard.

Prices for exported commodities, such as iron ore and soybeans, are drooping due to concerns over Chinese growth. Economic turmoil in Europe is cutting into demand for manufactured goods such as aircraft. Meanwhile, Brazil’s still-strong currency makes its exports less competitive. Investors are pulling billions of dollars out of Brazil and other developing countries.

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Brazil’s real weakens after late selloff

Paul Kiernan – The Wall Street Journal, 06/04/2012

SAO PAULO–Brazil’s real closed slightly weaker Monday in a late selloff that pushed the currency above the psychological barrier of BRL2.05 to the dollar, as international markets soured on concerns about the global economy and Europe’s debt.

The real exited active trading at BRL2.0501, according to Tullett Prebon via FactSet, compared with BRL2.0377 shortly after the open and BRL2.0473 at Friday’s close.

Brazil’s currency largely tracked global sentiment as investors shifted their focus away from hopeful news for Spain’s banking sector and toward U.S. economic data, among other bad omens.

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Jaguar land rover puts Brazil plant on hold

Anirban Chowdhury - The Wall Street Journal, 05/31/2012

MUMBAI – Tata Motors Ltd.’s U.K.-based Jaguar Land Rover luxury car unit has put on hold plans to build a vehicle assembly plant in Brazil, spooked by economic troubles in the South American nation and globally.

“There is no clarity in terms of policy in Brazil right now,” Ralf Speth, Jaguar Land Rover’s chief executive, said recently.

Mr. Speth in January said the company was considering an assembly facility in Brazil as part of a plan to expand in key growth markets. The company is among several global auto makers, like Daimler AG DAI.XE -1.62% and Volkswagen AG, VOW.XE -0.70% who have shifted focus to such markets to offset a demand slowdown in the U.S. and Europe.

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After a year in economic overdrive, Brazil hopes to elude pitfalls

Alexei Barrionuevo – New York Times, 10/10/2011

President Dilma Rousseff, center, visited an oil rig about 115 miles west of Rio de Janeiro in June. Sergio Moraes/Reuters

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — In the first major test of her stewardship of Latin America’s largest economy, President Dilma Rousseff is struggling to break free of an economic trap.

Coming off a year in which it recorded its highest growth in a quarter century, Brazil is faced with rising inflation, an overvalued currency and an industrial sector losing competitiveness to cheap Chinese imports.

But Ms. Rousseff’s promising efforts to fix those problems could be undermined in the coming months as the government embarks on one of its biggest spending sprees in decades.

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Brazil: São Paulo adopts a more international approach

Jonathan Wheatley-Financial Times, 10/20/09

Brazil’s apparent ease in brushing off the global economic crisis has put its equities and other assets among the world’s best performers this year.

The main stock index has gained 180 per cent since last November and the currency is comfortably above pre-crisis levels.

Foreign investors play a leading role and the BM&FBovespa, the multi-asset exchange formed by the merger of the São Paulo futures and stock exchanges in May last year, has been working quickly to make it easier to trade Brazilian assets.

By some measures, the BM&FBovespa remains an upstart. Just 400 or so companies are listed on its equities segment, for example, compared with about 3,600 on the New York Stock Exchange. But by other measures it is a giant. Its market capitalisation, at about $15.5bn, is bigger than NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX combined.

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The IMF Announced Brazil’s Leadership Position in Latin America

Veja Magazine, 10/01/09

The International Monetary Fund released their semester report in Istanbul, Turkey this Thursday and announced  that Brazil has taken on an important leadership role in the  Latin American recovery after the Global Economic Crisis.

The IMF revised previous economic forecast for the continent, reducing the decrease in growth estimated for this year (-2.5%) and elevating next year’s projected growth to 2.9% (2010). The IMF attributes the forecast’s revision to the aggressive export of primary materials, of which Brazil is at the forefront.

Brazil will play the role of the region’s economic locomotive. Although the country will experience negative growth in 2009 (-0.7%), it will reach +3.5% in 2010, thanks to their large internal market, to their diverse export market, and to their growing relationships with Asia.

Read full article (in Portuguese).