Brazil Archives

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News

Brazil’s Finance Minister Faces Storm

Brazil Well known for his caution, Brazil Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles is well aware of the enormity of his nation’s fiscal hole. Brazil is likely to report a primary deficit of $36 billion this year, instead of the $6.8 billion surplus previously forecast.

Emerging & Frontier Markets

Agribusiness To The Rescue for Brazil

Milestones | Brazil In this time of recession, Brazil’s economy is becoming more agribusiness-oriented. The sector generated 23% of Brazilian GDP last year, after 21.4% in 2014, and accounted for 46.3% of total exports.

News

Zika A Public Health, Not An Economic, Crisis

Economists don’t anticipate a major economic impact from the mosquito-born Zika virus—so far, at least—although it’s certainly a kick in the shins for struggling Brazil and an overhang for tourism in Latin America.

Economics, Policy & Regulation

Steady Interest Rates Help Brazil’s New Finance Minister

Brazil: The Banco Central do Brasil gave new Finance minister Nelson Barbosa a bit of help on January 20, when it decided to hold the short-term interest rate, the Selic, to 14.25%.

Capital Raising & Corporate Finance

Brazil Reeling After Another Junk Rating

The axe fell on Brazil heading into 2016 as it suffered a downgrade to junk status by Fitch Ratings, heightening the air of crisis as the beleaguered nation grapples with political turmoil and recession.

Capital Raising & Corporate Finance

The Brazilian Lion’s Next Tax Bite

Trends | Taxation Brazil is well known in the global business sector for its tax complexity, heavy tax burden (around 35% of GDP) and high use of technology for tax collection. Not for nothing do Brazilians call their tax authority—Receita Federal do Brasil—“the Lion.”

Data

Percentage of Public Deficit/Surplus in GDP Around the World

Government deficit or surplus is the difference between government receipts (mainly tax revenue) and government spending (i.e. salaries of government employees, social benefits, interest on the public debt) in a single year.

Economics, Policy & Regulation

Brazil and Beyond

Neil Shearing, chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, visited Global Finance on September 10, just as Standard & Poor’s cut Brazil’s public debt to junk level. We asked him about the outlook for that country and other emerging markets.

Banking

Continental Divide In Latin America

Regional Report | Latin America The large economies on the east coast of Latin America—Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina—are slumping badly. Things are far different out west.

Emerging & Frontier Markets

Brazil Ratings Downgrade Keeps Coming

Major rating agencies are chasing each other in downgrading Brazil, as the country struggles with recession, a spiraling devaluation of the real and a damaging political crisis.

Capital Raising & Corporate Finance

Companies Lock In Low Rates For 100 Year Bonds And Longer

Capital Markets | Debt Jaws dropped in June, when scandal-plagued Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company, announced plans to come to market with a 100-year bond. Who in their right mind would lend $2.5 billion for a century to an emerging markets company that in April wrote off $17 billion in overvalued assets and billions more in bribes?

Features

Brazil: Heading Towards Recession

Global Finance sat down with José Francisco de Lima Gonçalves, a professor of economics at São Paulo University and chief economist at Banco Fator, to discuss his views on Brazil in 2015.