|
 The Brazilian government is considering extending stimulus tax cuts on home appliances even as the country's economic recovery shows signs of gaining momentum. Tax cuts helped Brazilian auto industry sales to soar.
Brazil's Finance Minister Guido Mantega said this Monday, October 26, he would decide by the end of the month whether to extend tax cuts on home appliances. The decision hinges on a commitment by retailers and manufacturers to hire more workers and provide better financing to consumers, he told reporters in São Paulo.
The International Monetary Fund last week said Brazil and other Latin American economies emerging quickly from the global financial crisis should consider removing fiscal stimulus measures as strong capital inflows put pressure on currencies to appreciate.
Brazil in April cut taxes by as much as 10 percentage points on several home appliances, providing incentives for consumers to boost spending and lead the US$ 1.6 trillion economy out of its first recession since 2003. Retail sales in August rose for the fourth straight month, by 0.7% from July.
Brazil is expected to grow 4.8% next year, according to a last week Central Bank survey of about 100 economists. In July, economists were forecasting 2010 growth of 3.5%.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Monday the country needs lower taxes to spur domestic demand and meet a World Bank forecast to become the world's fifth-largest economy by the time it hosts the 2016 Olympics.
Lula addressing the nation in his weekly radio program said lower taxes coupled with government steps to boost credit will encourage Brazilians to "purchase what they still don't have."
Writing today in his weekly newspaper column "The President Answers," Lula informed that the government has been acting to stimulate production and avoid speculation and as example he cited the recent introduction of the 2% Financial Operations Tax on short term foreign investments.
Another measure to prevent speculation, according to the president, is the reduction in Brazil's key interest rate, the Selic. He stressed that at 8.75% at the moment, the Selic is the lowest in Brazilian history. Lula said also that the government has reduced the spread of public banks to force private banks to follow the same path.
MP/Bzz
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
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.
The second type of feedback,
From a jealous Polish boy saying Brazil is hopeless, its people are not decent human beings and he doesnt bet on Brazil as a country of the future, even though Brazil is not fighting to be a country of the future, its people are fighting to grow out of poverty. But this boy will say it wont happen and Poland and its communism will rule in the end (even though Poland has no people, they fled to England after joining the EU)
Then we will get a very very few other people who will give Brazil some praise for this article.