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 Trade surplus in Brazil hit US$ 1.7 billion in February, up from a US$ 518 million deficit in January and an US$ 882 million surplus in February 2008, the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Trade reported this week.
Despite the significant improvement in February, the country is still undergoing a strong economic deceleration compared with the same period in 2008. According to the ministry, exports in February reached US$ 9.5 billion, with an average rate of US$ 532.7 million per business day, up 14.4% from January but down 20% from the same period of last year.
Imports totaled US$ 7.8 billion, with an average of US$ 434.5 million per business day, down 11.5% from January and 30.9% from the amount registered in February 2008. The accumulated trade surplus in the first two months of 2009 dropped 26.3% from the same period in 2008, to US$ 1.2 billion, with an average of US$ 31.9 million per business day.
Both accumulated exports and imports also shrank in February, down 21.9% and 21.6% from the same period of last year, to 19.3 and 18.1 billion dollars respectively.
In 2008, Brazil was already experiencing a reduction in its trade surplus, mainly because of rising imports on strong domestic economic growth. Brazil's economy expanded by an estimated 5.6% in 2008, but growth this year is expected to reach only about 1.5%.
Brazil's foreign trade surplus narrowed significantly last year to 24.74 billion compared with the 40 billion of 2007.
According to Brazil's central bank weekly survey of expert opinion, released earlier Monday, the 2009 foreign trade surplus will reach just 13 billion US dollars.
The weekly survey tracks the opinions of 100 analysts and economists from banks and brokerages, reporting the average of their expectations.
Mercopress
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
Unless you make your living making the wonderful, tax-exempt farinha d'agua, in which case the rest of the world doesn't make much difference.
When you paulistanos are out of money and food and running for cover and safety, people in the amazon will be heading for the roca (hossa). Not living large, but eating and surviving.