SAO PAULO: Economists reduced once again their outlook on Brazil’s economic performance for this year and next year, underscoring a prolonged recession of Latin America’s largest economy.
Brazil’s gross domestic product is expected to shrink 3.66% this year, according to a weekly central-bank survey of 100 economists, compared with expectations a week ago for a 3.60% contraction. This marked the tenth-consecutive downward revision.
For 2017, economists reduced their view of the country’s economy expansion to 0.35% from 0.44%. In the meantime, economists reduced their estimate for the inflation rate in 2016, as measured by the consumer-price index, to 7.31% from 7.43%.
According to the central-bank survey, economists maintained their outlook for the year-end Selic rate at 14.25% and for 2017 at 12.50%. They also forecast Brazil to post a $43.53 billion trade surplus this year, up from the $42.40 billion expected in the previous week’s survey.
