Brazilian meats giant JBS SA plans to focus on Australia, U.S. pork operations and its processed foods division under a 2015 strategy focused on organic expansion rather than acquisitions, CEO Wesley Batista said on Thursday, and estimated that between 2.5 billion to 3 billion reais (806 million/967 million dollars) in capital investment will be needed this year to support the strategy.
Brazil's economic growth depends more on the approval of austerity measures needed to rebuild investor confidence than on a weaker currency, Finance Minister Joaquim Levy told O Globo newspaper.
President Dilma Rousseff said here Thursday that Brazil's economic woes are cyclical in nature that the austerity measures her administration has adopted to rectify the situation will begin to bear fruit late this year.
Brazil's Central Bank appears likely to continue raising interest rates in the short-term, saying in its most recent meeting that its inflation-fighting effort in recent months has been insufficiently effective. The view was reflected in the minutes, published on Thursday, of its monetary policy committee's March 4 meeting, when the bank raised its benchmark Selic interest rate by 50 basis points to 12.75%.
A former Petrobras executive told a congressional hearing in Brazil on Tuesday that the ruling political party received up to 200 million dollars skimmed from contracts with the state-run oil company, reiterating claims made in plea bargain testimony.
Brazil’s congressional heads denied involvement in the country’s largest graft scandal after being named among dozens of politicians for investigation. Renan Calheiros and Eduardo Cunha, the heads of the Senate and Lower House respectively, and Rio de Janeiro Senator Lindbergh Farias all rejected allegations of graft in the Petrobras kickback scheme dubbed “Carwash.”
Brazil and Mexico announced the renewal of vehicle quotas for four years, delaying the implementation of a free-trade agreement between the two countries. Under the new agreement, Brazil and Mexico will permit $1.56 billion of duty-free vehicle imports for the first year of the agreement. That amount will rise 3% each year until the agreement expires, in 2019, when they’ll return to a free-trade regime.
President Dilma Rousseff appealed to Brazilians on Sunday to back fiscal austerity policies, while saying that the belt-tightening will last as long as needed and results will only start showing at the end of this year.
Brazil's Supreme Court late Friday approved an investigation of dozens of top politicians, including a former president and leaders of congress, for alleged connections to what they call the biggest graft scheme ever uncovered in the country which has the largest economy in Latin America.
Inflation jumped in Brazil on February with price increases hitting an annual rate of 7.7%, the highest in nearly nine years, officials said on Friday. The national statistics institute IBGE said prices rose 1.22% in February, pushing inflation well above the government's target ceiling of 6.5%.