Brazil's GDP to expand 0.1% in 2009: survey

• Source: Xinhua
• [13:00 October 14 2009]
• Comments

Brazil's gross domestic product (GDP) will grow 0.1 percent this year, the country's Central Bank said in the Focus market survey released on Tuesday.

In the previous survey, released last week, Brazilian economists had predicted a 0.01 percent growth.

The country's GDP would increase by 4.8 percent in 2010 compared with a 4.5-percent growth estimated by economists last week, according to the latest survey.

The country's annual basic interest rate Selic would remain at 8.75 percent, which is the current rate, according to the survey. However, it believed that the Selic rate in 2010 would rise to 10.25 percent, from 9.75 percent in the previous projection.

The projection for Brazil's 2009 inflation rate was expected to fall from 4.31 in the previous survey to 4.29, and for 2010, Brazilian economists maintained an projection of 4.4 percent.

Both figures were below the 4.5 percent inflation target set by the Brazilian government, and also much lower than last year's figure of 5.9 percent.

The Brazilian Real-US dollar exchange rate in 2009 also has shown variations since last week, going from 1.80 to 1.76 reais per US dollar, according to the survey. It also predicted that by the end of 2010, the exchange rate would rise to 1.80 reais per US dollar.

The economists maintained their forecast of a total of 25 billion dollars for foreign direct investments and predicted that next year's investments would rise to 31 billion dollars from 30.3billion dollars in the previous survey.

According to the survey, trade surplus would total 25.8 billion dollars in 2009, and 17.3 billion dollars in 2010. Last year, Brazil registered a trade surplus of 24.7 billion dollars.