Brazilian bank economists cut the country’s growth estimate for this year to below 3%, (2.97%) according to a last week survey by the Central bank of over one hundred institutions and which was released Monday.
Global stocks and the Euro rallied on Wednesday after the world's leading central banks agreed to cut the cost for European banks to borrow much-needed dollars.
Major central banks around the world will cooperate to offer three-month US dollar loans to commercial banks in order to prevent money markets from freezing up because of Europe's sovereign debt crisis.
Brazil has no plans to sell US Treasuries or change its foreign currency reserves holdings as a result of Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the US’s credit rating, a government official said.
Beijing bluntly criticized the United States after the superpower's credit rating was downgraded, saying the good old days of borrowing were over. S&P cut the US long-term credit rating from top-tier AAA by a notch to AA-plus on yesterday, over concerns about the nation's budget deficits and climbing debt burden.
Asian stock markets have slumped on Friday, extending a global equity sell-off after Wall Street had its worst day in more than two years. Japan's main Nikkei 225 index shed 3.4% to 9,329.75. South Korea lost 4.2%, Australia slid 2.4% and China's Shanghai SE Composite Index was down 2%.
Brazil registered its second-largest volume of net monthly foreign-exchange inflows on record in July. Net dollar inflows in the month reached 15.83 billion, compared with 2.56 billion in net outflows in June and only 713 million in net inflows in July last year.
While in the rest of South America governments are trying to make the inflow of US dollars more difficult in Argentina the greenback is in great demand as the coming presidential election has triggered a solid “flight to safety”.
The Argentine Central bank has purchased so far this week 500 million US dollars to ensure that the country’s exporters retain a favourable exchange rate and importers are not that tempted to buy foreign goods.
“Saving in US dollars or in soybeans is the same” cautioned Argentine economist Carlos Melconian, who argued that “grain and oilseed prices are more linked to the value of the dollar than to demand for food produce”.