Brasília – This Tuesday (13th), at a hearing of the Brazilian Senate’s Economic Affairs Committee (CAE, in the Portuguese acronym), Finance minister Guido Mantega said 2012 will be a year of challenges for the country’s economy. In his address, he stressed that the international crisis persists and has not been solved, but still Brazil is able to continue facing the turmoil, because measures have been taken to counterbalance the adverse conditions.
“It was a complicated year, 2011. We had to deal with inflation and the crisis. But the economic growth [2.7% in 2011] was satisfactory, and employment rates went up. In this respect, the population is well catered to,” he said. To the minister, Brazil remains one of a few countries privileged enough to grow while creating jobs and raising the volume of total wages paid amidst the crisis.
The minister spoke in favour of the government’s fiscal policy, controlled public spending and the fiscal target, which has been maintained at above 3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as means for addressing the crisis. Mantega reaffirmed the government’s commitment to controlling inflation and keeping a single-digit benchmark interest rate (known as the Selic rate). “Brazil is on its way to an interest rate which can be called normal, that is, a single-digit rate,” he said.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
