Brazil's foreign trade in goods, some US$ 640bn annually is done mostly in US dollars, some 95%, but there are some inroads to other currencies such as the Euro and its own Brazilian Reais. These figure come from an annual report on trade operations’ currency statements compiled by Brazil’s Foreign Trade Secretariat of the Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade, and Services (Secex-MDIC), and revealed last week.
Joaquim Levy, managing director and World Bank chief financial officer, has been tapped to be the next president of Brazil’s national economic and social development bank BNDES, news advanced to a column in daily O Estado de S. Paulo published on Sunday.
Brazil’s government will tap the nation’s sovereign fund and recent surpluses to cut debt and avoid breaking budget rules this year, officials said on Monday, after easily meeting the 2017 fiscal target.
Brazil’s lower house of Congress approved the main text of a bill creating a market-based benchmark interest rate for state lender BNDES, in a victory for President Michel Temer. The lower house will now have to analyze three potential amendments to the bill early on Tuesday before sending the measure to a final Senate vote, speaker Rodrigo Maia told reporters.
The Brazilian Congress will return from recess this week and could bring back political uncertainty fears to local markets, as lawmakers are set to decide on Wednesday if the Supreme Court should trial President Michel Temer for corruption. Temer was formally charged with passive corruption by the prosecutor-general Rodrigo Janot at the end of last month.
Brazil’s national development bank has frozen $13.5bn of funds for 47 overseas projects, including those in Angola, Mozambique, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, as yet more corruption charges are brought against politicians and executives arising from the Lava Jato corruption probe.
Brazilian presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff former Presidential Chief of Staff and Finance Minister Antonio Palocci was temporarily arrested on Monday morning in São Paulo as part of the 35th phase of the Lava Jato (Car Wash) Operation investigating the Petrobras corruption scandal.
Brazilian states will get a six-month grace period on debts with the federal government, followed by a year and a half of reduced payments, interim President Michel Temer announced.
Brazil's interim president announced austerity measures on Tuesday aimed at pulling Latin America's largest economy from its worst crisis in decades, warning that a failure to act would sentence future generations to “extraordinary hardship.” Speaking with government leaders in a national televised meeting, interim president Michel Temer, 75, also banged his hand on the table while insisting he was up to the job.
Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer will replace the head of the government’s giant development bank with a female economist, following heavy criticism over his appointment of an all-male white cabinet.