Brazil

• Thursday, January 24th 2019 - 09:33 UTC

  Sao Paulo state willing to support automaker GM with tax incentives

  

  General Motors Brazil unit is in advanced talks with Sao Paulo state to receive tax incentives, the company told public officials and union representatives at a meeting on Tuesday, a few days after telling workers in a memo that it was losing money in the country.

• Thursday, January 24th 2019 - 09:12 UTC

  Saudi Arabia limits imports from a number of Brazilian chicken processing plants

  

  Saudi Arabia has barred five Brazilian chicken processing plants from exporting to the Middle Eastern country, leaving 25 with valid export permits, Brazil’s meat trade association ABPA said, citing “technical” reasons. The Saudi move threw up a fresh hurdle for top exporter BRF SA and its rivals just a day after an anti-dumping dispute with China was resolved.

• Wednesday, January 23rd 2019 - 07:58 UTC

  Bolsonaro tells Davos he plans to make the “new Brazil” an investment-friendly country

  

  Brazil's newly-elected populist President Jair Bolsonaro addressed the world's business elite in Davos on Tuesday, vowing to transform Latin America's largest economy into a more investment-friendly country. On his first international trip since becoming president, Bolsonaro delivered the keynote speech at the World Economic Forum.

• Tuesday, January 22nd 2019 - 10:13 UTC

  Brazil plans to privatize airports and railways; Chinese investment would be “well received”

  

  Brazil’s government will announce the privatization of southern airports, including Curitiba, in the second quarter of this year, according to Adalberto Vasconcelos, head of the PPI government program tasked with luring private investment in the country’s infrastructure.

• Tuesday, January 22nd 2019 - 10:11 UTC

  Brazilian government trying to recover control over its overloaded prison system

  

  Police and soldiers are being deployed in large numbers to Brazil's northeast to fight a wave of gang violence fueled by the overloaded, collapsing prison system. More than 400 elite federal troops have been sent to the city of Fortaleza and the rest of Ceara state to reinforce overwhelmed local cops, who face a dramatic rash of attacks on government buildings, buses, police stations, banks and bridges by well-armed gang members.

• Tuesday, January 22nd 2019 - 10:09 UTC

  Brazilian 2019 coffee production forecasted to decline 11.5/18%

  

  Brazilian food supply and statistics agency Conab has reported that Brazil’s coffee production is expected to decline in 2019 to between 50.48 and 54.48 million bags. Conab attributes the 11.5 to 18% drop from the 61.65 million bags the agency reported for the year prior to Brazil’s coffee plants recovering from an increased output in 2018, which is affecting Arabica in particular.

• Monday, January 21st 2019 - 09:17 UTC

  Former minister and advisor confirms payments of bribes in hand to Lula da Silva

  

  Antonio Palocci, who was minister during the governments of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, affirmed that he gave the former president, in “several opportunities”, cash proceeds of bribes from the construction companies Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez, according to the Globo Group.

• Saturday, January 19th 2019 - 09:36 UTC

  Brazil plans a self-monitoring system for food processors, despite a non-encouraging record

  

  Brazil is moving toward a self-monitoring system for food processors, Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina Dias said on Friday, including meatpackers still recovering from an inspection scandal that hurt trade with key markets. Dias said in an interview that Brazil's new business-friendly government plans to send draft legislation on self-monitoring to Congress in the first half of this year.

• Saturday, January 19th 2019 - 09:28 UTC

  Brazilian lawmakers trip to China triggers strong controversy among Bolsonaro's bunker

  

  A trip to China by lawmakers from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's party has stirred anger in the far-right leader's entourage, partly because of his wariness of the Asian power but also because of the group's stated mission. The delegation of eight members of Bolsonaro's ultraconservative Social Liberal Party (PSL) said it was on the visit to check out Chinese facial-recognition technology, with a view to it maybe being used in Brazil to combat crime.

• Saturday, January 19th 2019 - 09:22 UTC

  Extreme wet January displaces thousands and floods farmland in Mercosur member countries

  

  Intense rainfall in northeast Argentina and neighbouring areas in Mercosur members has caused devastating floods, amplifying the economic burdens of Argentina's recession. Over 5,000 people have evacuated the region, and millions of hectares of crops have been sent underwater.