MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Embattled Rousseff argues countries are not defined by their credit ratings

“Brazil is much more than its rating, and just as all have started growing again, Brazil will grow again,” Rousseff said

Embattled and leaner Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Wednesday that a country is not defined by its credit rating, downplaying Standard & Poor's decision to assign junk status to Latin American largest economy's sovereign debt.

 “Many countries this decade have gone through difficult situations and had their credit ratings lowered. It already happened to the United States, France, Italy, Spain, and now it's happened to Brazil. But all of those countries are more than their ratings,” she said in an interview with radio stations from the interior of the southeastern state of Sao Paulo.

“Brazil also is much more than its rating, and just as all have started growing again, Brazil will grow again,” Rousseff said, adding that her government is taking the necessary measures to put the country back on an expansionary path.

Standard & Poor's last week lowered Brazil's sovereign credit rating to junk, stripping the country of the investment-grade status it had enjoyed since 2008.

It issued the downgrade even though as of March 2015 Brazil had $363 billion in foreign currency reserves and only $72 billion in foreign currency-denominated debt, Felipe Rezende, a professor of economics at Hobart and Williams Smith Colleges in New York state, wrote in the New Economic Perspectives blog.

After growing a meager 0.1% last year, Brazil's economy slipped into a technical recession at mid-year and, according to projections by private-sector analysts, will contract 2.55% in 2015 and 0.60% at least next year.

Rousseff says Brazil's economic woes are mainly attributable to turbulence in global markets.

After winning re-election for a second term last year, Rousseff implemented an unpopular austerity program aimed at reigniting the economy. Those measures, including spending cuts and tax hikes, are part of a “fiscal rebalancing” that will stimulate investment and increase employment rates that have fallen sharply in recent months, Rousseff said.

The president also slammed the opposition's plans to impeach her over a massive corruption scandal centered on state-controlled oil giant Petrobras, a company whose board of directors she once chaired, and alleged fiscal maneuvers last year to disguise a budget gap.

“In countries that have gone through difficulties, you never saw anyone proposing a democratic rupture as a way out of the crisis. That wants to use the crisis to gain power via a modern version of a coup,” she underlined.

Earlier in the day the Brazilian president interrupted her daily biking routine to help a man who suffered an accident when trying to avoid a dog. The incident, until the emergency service arrived, with Rousseff helping together with other bikers was filmed by local television stations.

For several months now Rousseff is on a strict diet, which since May has helped her lose 15 kilos, according to the Sao Paulo media. Allegedly the diet bans all carbohydrates and processed foods, and includes a simple 'hot broth' before each meal. This is combined with long bike tours and walking in the grounds of the presidential residence.