Brazil’s Bolsonaro Courts Foreign Investors To Boost His Re-Election Prospects

Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, is using the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank at Washington to gain the support of international financial agencies for his October 30 election runoff against a leftist former president, Lula da Silva.The Brazilian minister of economy, Paulo Guedes, arrived Tuesday at Washington, where he will be meeting with representatives of banks and international investment funds. His visit is intended to “parade” Brazil’s economic success, a professor of economics at the Federal University of São Paulo, Andre Roncaglia, says.“Behind that purpose, I am positive there is a subliminal message to investors that this allegedly strong economy might not last long, should Lula win the elections,” Mr. Roncaglia told the Sun.A Brazilian political risk analyst, Thiago de Aragao, says Mr. Guedes wants to gain the confidence of foreign investors and showcase some of his accomplishments as minister of economy. “The outcomes of our actions and resolve have started to be realized and, if maintained, will continue to steer the Brazilian economy’s performance for many years,” Mr. Guedes said in a statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee Tuesday.Mr. Guedes’s visit comes as Mr. Bolsonaro celebrates declining inflation in his country for the third consecutive month, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. The country had a monthly negative inflation rate of 0.29 percent in September.“The index is the lowest for the month of September since the beginning of the historical series, started in 1980,” Mr. Guedes tweeted from Washington. “At the same time, the IMF published a report reviewing Brazil’s growth upwards this year, exactly as we had expected.”The IMF’s report said that the country will grow 2.8 percent this year, a 1.1 percent increase over the July estimate. Unemployment is below 9 percent, the lowest number in the last seven years, and annual inflation in 2022 is predicted to be 5.7 percent, a lower rate than that for the European Union. Mr. Bolsonaro said Brazil’s economy is now “an example for the rest of the world,” and emphasized that from the start, the government has been working to ease Brazilian lives. Some Brazilian economists fear that the economic success might not last long if Mr. da Silva is elected. They say that Mr. da Silva has been focusing on his last presidency, a period of economic growth, as a campaign strategy.According to Brazilian newspapers, tensions are rising between Mr. da Silva and his economic advisors, who are trying to avoid repeating the mistakes of Dilma Rousseff, Mr. da Silva’s handpicked successor, who was impeached for breaking budget laws in 2016. The director of Macroeconomic Research for Latin America at Goldman Sachs, Alberto Ramos, told the Argentinian newspaper Infobae that Mr. da Silva has been asking Brazilians to trust him without having a clear and detailed economic plan, and has avoided speaking about potential candidates for his minister of economy position.The candidate that came third in the first round of voting earlier this month, Simone Tebet, said that Mr. da Silva “has undervalued the voter” by not presenting a government plan and only speaking about the past. On Saturday, a Brazilian newspaper that has supported Mr. da Silva since the start, Folha de São Paulo, published an editorial titled, “It’s the economy, Lula.” It asked Mr. da Silva to present an economic plan before the October 30 runoff.The International Monetary Fund did not immediately respond to requests for comments about its views and possible concerns regarding Brazil’s upcoming elections.The institution this year has been releasing statements critical of the economic policies of some other governments. In the United Kingdom, after Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng announced a plan to cut taxes, the IMF warned that the proposal would “complicate the fights” against soaring prices and “will likely increase inequality.”

Brazil’s Bolsonaro Courts Foreign Investors To Boost His Re-Election Prospects

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