BRASILIA: Output in June fell 0.3 percent from the previous month after a 0.6 percent decline in May, the national statistics agency said in Rio de Janeiro. That was better than the median estimate from 37 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, whose median forecast was for a 0.7 percent decline. Industrial output fell 3.2 percent from the year before.
Brazil’s central bank last week signaled interest rates are now high enough, which is a measure of relief for an industrial sector whose confidence has been routed with borrowing costs at their highest since 2006. A weaker real may help exporters boost their competitiveness, even as a wider drawdown of activity portends recession.
“You had some temporary improvements in some sectors that wound up softening the fall, but it is still a very difficult picture,” Thais Zara, chief economist at Rosenberg Consultores Associados, said by phone from Sao Paulo. “Production of capital goods is at a level similar to the one we had at the worst of the 2009 crisis.”
Output of capital goods in June, a barometer of investment, fell 3.3 percent, the statistics institute said. Production of consumer goods was flat, including a 1.7 percent gain in semi- durable and non-durable goods and a 10.7 percent drop in durable goods production. Output of food products rose 3 percent.
