Brazil’s Civil Aviation Agency, ANAC, announced Wednesday the gradual liberation of air fares for all international flights departing from Brazil. The decision applies to all regular airlines, national or international and will be arranged according to a one year chronogram.
Brazil is expected to push very hard to have more say in the International Monetary Fund, reflecting the importance of emerging countries. To support that greater influence Brazil has pledged to advance up to 4.5 billion US dollars to the multilateral organization.
Brazil became in 2008 the world's top consumer of agriculture pesticides (ahead of the US), and continues to use a range of dangerous pesticides banned in other countries, according to a study released Friday.
Brazil's government will offer a ten billion Reales credit line from BNDES, the National Development Bank to support activities in agribusiness, Finance Minister Guido Mantega announced. He added the funds would go mostly to support Brazil’s ailing meatpacking sector and would be offered at an annual interest rate of 11.25%.
Brazil's government cut its 2009 primary budget surplus target to 2.5% of GDP from 3.8% and set a target of 3.3% of GDP for the next three years, Finance Minister Guido Mantega said on Wednesday speaking at a Congressional hearing.
Brazil’s President Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe with over 70% approval have the best leaders’ performances in Latinamerica while in the other extreme figure Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner and Honduras Manuel Zelaya, below 30%, according to the prestigious Mexican pollster Consulta Mitofsky.
Brazil’s Congress Lower House approved on Tuesday night approved legislation making an existing Sovereign Wealth Fund into a permanent fixture. The Chamber of Deputies voted 274-102 to approve a government bill making the fund permanent and approving an initial total for it of 14.2 billion Brazilian Reales, approximately 6.5 billion US dollars.
Brazilian president Lula da Silva anticipated he will address the Cuban issue in the coming Americas Summit next Friday in Trinidad Tobago, but Brazilian diplomacy is also working to ensure it does not become an irritating discussion, according to Sao Paulo press.
Brazilian economists forecast that Latinamerica’s biggest economy will fall into the worst recession since 1992 as companies scale back output amid the first global recession since World War II.
If forecasts are confirmed the 70 million tons of the 2008/09 Argentine harvest would represent 2.9% of the world’s grain production when in previous crops it had reached 4.2%. Brazil in the meantime will have reached 5.5% of world production. Only a few years ago the difference was minimal with Brazil almost 4% and Argentina above 3%.