Brazil will reap a record grain harvest of 163.3 million tons this year, a gain of two per cent over 2011, the IBGE statistics agency says. The IBGE's latest forecast, based on July data is 1.6% higher than the previous projection.
The Brazilian Senate has approved an affirmative action bill that reserves half the spots in federal universities for high school graduates of public schools, and distributes them according to the racial makeup of each state.
Brazil reminded Paraguay it can use the power it needs from the giant Itaipu hydro but there is a contract which regulates how to manage the surplus. A day earlier president Federico Franco said that Paraguay would not “yield” any more electricity to Brazil.
The strike declared by the Brazilian Federal Police on Tuesday is beginning to cause difficulties at international airports, delaying the crossing of visitors to neighbouring countries and some organized pickets have been marching in front of federal government offices.
A delegation from the Argentine Patagonian province of Chubut fishing industry is on a business round of Brazil and the first city to visit was Florianópolis. The group led by Chubut governor Martin Buzzi is also scheduled to visit Sao Paulo and Brasilia.
Weak economic growth will likely prompt Brazil's central bank to cut interest rates deeper than previously expected this year, a weekly central bank survey of economists showed on Monday.
Brazilian Armed Forces began this week a major deployment along the borders of Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia involving 9.000 troops from the three services with the purpose of testing border security against smugglers mainly of arms and drugs and organized crime, said the Ministry of Defence.
Brazil is the only country that in the last ten years has benefited from Mercosur with an intra-zone trade surplus of 36.8 billion dollars while the other three full members, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay have accumulated huge deficits in the same period, according to Argentine economist Orlando Ferreres a regular columnist from La Nacion with graduate studies in Harvard.
Brazil state-controlled oil company Petrobras reported a net loss of 1.35 billion Reais (some 633 million dollars at the current exchange rate) in the second quarter, attributing the result to the depreciation of the Real relative to the dollar.
Brazil’s government controlled oil and gas corporation Petrobras and Britain’s BP announced the discovery of oil in a deep-water offshore well in a new area for exploration off Brazil's northeast coast, according to a securities filing on Thursday.