Brasília – In the week of the meeting of the Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (Copom, in the Portuguese acronym), Brazilian financial market investors and analysts have revised up their expectation for the benchmark interest rate (aka Selic) for the end of 2015. The market expects the Selic to be 13% per annum, which implies a 0.75 percentage point increase from the current 12.25% rate by the end of the year. The previous forecast was 12.75% per annum.
The Selic estimate is part of the Focus Bulletin, a poll of banking institutions conducted by the Brazilian Central Bank. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected to be down 0.58% this year, while the prior forecast was of a 0.5% decline. Industrial production is now expected to decline by 0.72% this year; last week, production was expected to decline by 0.35%. The exchange rate forecast has gone from R$ 2.90 to R$ 2.91 for US$ 1. The trade surplus expectation has increased from US$ 4.4 billion to US$ 5 billion. The forecast for foreign direct investment has remained at US$ 60 billion.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
