Rio de Janeiro – The first review done by the Brazilian Foreign Trade Association (AEB) for the 2015 trade balance indicates a drop of 4.3% for exports and 9.8% for imports. The estimated figure for Brazilian trade abroad now is US$ 215.360 billion, against US$ 225.033 of the first projection.
Regarding imports, AEB’s review projects US$ 207.220 billion in 2015, against US$ 229.615 billion of the first estimation. With this, the association expects a US$ 8.140 billion surplus for the trade balance next year, against an estimated 2014 deficit of US$ 4.582 billion.
José Augusto de Castro, AEB’s president, said this Thursday (18) that it’s been difficult this year to try to forecast the trade balance, specially the imports. According to him, although government policies, especially in the economic area, were not yet announced, everyone expects them to have a huge impact over the economy and imports.
The market expects a raise in the benchmark interest rate (Selic), set by the Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (Copom), and the Long-Term Interest Rate (TJLP), adopted by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) in its operations. AEB also expects a spending cut and blocking of resources for public banks. “All of this means an economy contraction and lower demand.”
This way, there should be a strong drop of imports, which will generate a trade balance surplus, described by José Augusto de Castro as a negative one, because “it is obtained not by an increase of exports, but a drop of imports”.
AEB’s president said that the price of the three main commodities – iron ore, oil and soybean – will keep dropping in 2015. All of this will intensify the falling tendency of Brazil’s share in world exports, after an increase of 1.41% in 2011, considered the best ranking in the last 50 years, says AEB. The association’s projection is that this share will decrease in 2014 to 1.21%, a figure similar to 2008, and will reach 1.14% or 1.15% in 2015.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
