More austere, accommodating Rousseff paying off for Brazil

Brian Winter and Anthony Boadle – Reuters, 4/10/2015

The “new Dilma” is starting to produce results.

By embracing power-sharing deals and budget cuts that she shunned during her first term in office, President Dilma Rousseff has begun to ease the economic and political crisis plaguing Brazil, congressional leaders and economists say.

Rousseff’s decision this week to hand formal responsibility for negotiating with Congress to Vice President Michel Temer, a leader of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), was a milestone that should help ease tensions with the biggest party in her coalition and dissuade it from sabotaging her economic agenda as it did earlier this year, legislators said.

Brazil’s stock and currency markets rallied as investors hoped the more stable political climate, and new signs that Rousseff is shifting toward more market-friendly policies, will eventually help Latin America’s largest economy recover from what is expected to be a moderate recession this year.

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Developing countries should be better represented in global institutions: Brazil’s Rousseff

Rodrigo Campos – Reuters, 09/24/2014

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff told the United Nations on Wednesday that developing countries should be better represented in international financial institutions that otherwise are in danger of losing legitimacy.

“The delay in the expansion of voting rights of developing countries in these institutions is unacceptable,” Rousseff said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

She said it was imperative to eliminate what she called a disparity between the importance of emerging economies and their “insufficient” representation in such institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

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Batteries and business in Brazil

Jessica Orwig – Physics Today, 7/18/2014

When Italian physicist Alessandro Volta was electrocuting frog legs in the 19th century, he was unaware of how vast and significant his subsequent discoveries would be for science and industry. In 1800 Volta designed the world’s first battery, which is not too different from the one that powers your smartphone today. Amy Prieto wants to change that.

Prieto is an associate professor at Colorado State University’s chemistry department. In 2008 she cofounded Prieto Battery. Today’s batteries are too expensive to produce, and they display “low battery” too soon after charging for Prieto’s liking. That is why she and her company are working toward a novel design that is 10 times more powerful, 5 times longer lasting, and less expensive than any battery on the current market.

“We’re trying to build this dream battery with these pretty amazing attributes. But the way that we make it is also pretty unusual,” says Prieto, who is one of many speakers presenting at this year’s Industrial Physics Forum (IPF) Conference on Industrial Physics in Emerging Economies II at the University of Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil.

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Housing for the base of the pyramid in Brazil: a future without slums

Rebecca Rocha & Tatiana Bessarabova – The Guardian, 5/8/2014

Rapid urbanisation has created immense challenges for cities in emerging economies that are unable to deal with the influx of people. Close to 1 billion individuals around the world live in slums and other inadequate housing, and this number is projected to triple by 2050 if the problem remains unaddressed. Considering the enormous need and substantial size of the low-income housing market, which is worth more than $300bn globally, very few market-based approaches exist to provide housing solutions for poor people.

Through a collaborative effort, the Business Call to Action (BCtA) and theAspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) Brazil Chapter set out to explore the issue of affordable housing at the base of the pyramid in Brazil, one of the most rapidly urbanising countries in Latin America, where more than 50 million people have inadequate housing. This report is the result of dialogue involving the city government of São Paulo, civil society, real estate developers, entrepreneurs, private companies and investors, to discuss challenges and solutions for low-income communities in Brazil.

The topic of low-income housing in Brazil is hotly contested as the country races to implement its controversial plan to reduce favelas (slums) before the World Cup this year and the Olympics in 2016.

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Brazil protests: the price of progress

Boaventura de Sousa Santos – The Guardian, 06/28/2013

With the election of President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil decided to pick up the pace in its effort to become a global power. Although quite a few steps in this direction had been initiated before, they were then given a renewed impetus: see the United Nations conference on environment and development and Rio+20, both in 2012; the Fifa World Cup in 2014; the 2016 Olympic Games; the ongoing quest for a permanent seat on the UN security council; the active role in the growing prominence of the “emerging economies” (Brics – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa); José Graziano da Silva’s 2012 appointment as director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, and, as of 2013, Roberto Azevêdo’s appointment as director general of the World Trade Organisation; an aggressive policy for the exploration of natural resources both in Brazil and in Africa, particularly in Mozambique; and the favouring of large-scale industrial agriculture, namely with respect to livestock and soy production as well as agro-fuels.

Boasting a positive international image earned by President Lula da Silva’s social inclusion policies, this developmentalist Brazil has come across in the eyes of the world as a novel, benevolent, inclusive type of power. Thus the international community couldn’t be more surprised when, over the last week, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of the country’s major cities in order to demonstrate. While Turkey’s recent demonstrations were promptly explained away in terms of the “two Turkeys” interpretation, it has proved more difficult to recognise the coexistence of “two Brazils”. Nevertheless, there it is before our own eyes.

The difficulty in recognising the latter phenomenon lies in the very nature of the “other Brazil”, which tends to defy simplistic analyses. It is made up of three narratives and temporalities. The first is the narrative of social exclusion (in one of the world’s most unequal countries), of the landowning oligarchies, of violent bossism (“caciquismo”) and of small, racist political elites. It goes back to colonial times and has replicated itself in ever-changing shapes to this day.

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Brazil didn’t fix inflation and now it’s paying the price

Michael J. Casey – The Wall Street Journal, 06/06/2013

Lesson No. 1 from Brazilian authorities’ struggle to prop up the real: If you can’t control inflation, you can’t control your currency.

For all the firepower Brazil is throwing at driving the real higher, the market clearly wants to take it the other way. Despite an unexpectedly large rate hike on May 29, two rounds of dollar-selling intervention by the Brazilian central bank and, most drastic of all, an end to the so-called IOF tax on foreign bond purchases, the currency is trading only slightly above four-year lows.

Other emerging-market currencies have also weakened over the past week, amid concerns that the Federal Reserve is preparing to pullback on a flood of monetary stimulus that has flowed relentlessly into world markets. However, we’re seeing none of the same scramble to defend them by officials in those countries. In fact, officials from Colombia to Poland have been indicating that they are quite happy to see this depreciation, as it helps boost exports and counteract slowing global demand.

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Brazil scraps IOF tax on foreign fixed income investment

Financial Times, 06/05/2013

Now this was unexpected. Brazil on Tuesday said it would scrap the 6 per cent IOF (financial operations tax) currently levied on foreign portfolio inflows into fixed income investments.

It’s a pretty drastic move. The country only raised the IOF on fixed income investments from 4 per cent to 6 per cent a little over two and a half years ago.

At the time, the hike was intended to stem the flow of hot money that had been making its way into Brazil’s high-yielding fixed income market and curb the Brazilian real’s rise against the US dollar.

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Brazil ETFs: more trouble on the horizon?

Neena Mishra – NASDAQ, 07/16/2012

2012 started on a strong note for the emerging economies but many of them have been hit recently by slowdown concerns. Of the giant BRIC nations, Brazil seems to be the worst hit.

Brazil had benefited immensely from the decade long commodity boom but growth seems to have stalled now mainly due to slowdown in its major export destinations.

According to the latest survey of economists by the Brazil’s central bank, the GDP will grow at a rate of just 2.2% this year. Last year the economy grew at 2.7%, down sharply from 7.5% growth in 2010.

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BRICS countries vow to help poor nations in health

Gillian Wong – The Miami Herald, 07/11/2011

The world’s top emerging countries banded together Monday to help fight diseases in the poorest countries, pledging to explore the transfer of technologies to the developing world to enable poor nations to produce cheap and effective lifesaving medicines.

Health ministers from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – the so-called BRICS countries – meeting in Beijing said their collaboration would help strengthen health systems and increase access to affordable medicines for diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis.

Such cooperation could pressure multinational pharmaceutical companies. Brazil and India have been at the forefront of promoting generic drugs as an affordable alternative to expensive brand-name medicines for people in developing nations.

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Rousseff faces big challenges

Glauco Arbix – Miami Herald, 11/03/2010

Brazil has changed dramatically over the past 15 years. It has set its economy on the right course, reduced poverty, lessened inequality and consolidated its democracy. The ghosts of the past — authoritarianism, political persecution and censorship — have been left behind, as Brazilian democracy passed important tests such as the impeachment of a president and the rise to the presidency of a former trade-union leader.

Brazil has now passed another test: having a woman at the height of executive power. The challenges facing President-elect Dilma Rousseff are huge, but so are her advantages. The basis for continued rapid economic development has been established, and there is nothing to suggest the possibility of significant change in inflation targets, the autonomy of the central bank or the floating exchange rate.

Rousseff owes her victory to outgoing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the success of his administration. She knows that Brazil’s progress under Lula was supported by stable economic growth, higher social transfers to poor households through programs such as Bolsa Familia and democracy.

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