The Economist demite Mantega e sua tropa: so falta assinar a demissao...

Maneira de dizer, claro, mas não poderia ser mais claro, claro...
Desculpem estar sendo claro, mas vou ser mais claro ainda: se o governo quiser escapar da mediocridade econômica de ter baixo crescimento com inflação alta, e trapalhadas sobre trapalhadas nas medidas econômicas -- que diga-se de passagem são feitas por vezes bem mais acima do que a equipe econômica -- seus mais altos responsáveis (na verdade, só tem um, o mesmo que está na fotografia irônica da Economist) deveriam demitir os keynesianos de botequim que hoje deslustram a política econômica (e não me refiro apenas à área fazendária apenas, mas o lado comercial e monetário, também).
Mas, sendo ainda mais claríssimo, sabem quando isso vai ocorrer: não antes de novas trapalhadas acontecerem, e aproveitando alguma desculpa esfarrapada (como doença em família, essas coisas sempre salvadoras)...
Muito claro, não é mesmo?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

 

Brazil’s economy

A breakdown of trust

If she wants a second term, Dilma Rousseff should get a new economic team

The Economist, December 8th 2012 | from the print edition

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JUST two years ago, when Dilma Rousseff was elected Brazil’s president, the country’s economy was booming. It then ground to a halt and is now struggling to recover. Despite increasingly frantic official efforts at stimulation, the moribund creature grew by only 0.6% in the third quarter—half the number forecast by Guido Mantega, the finance minister. Most market analysts now expect GDP growth to be less than 1.5% this year and not much more than 3% next year. So much for the notion that the B in the BRICs is a speedy economy.

The motors of growth that powered Brazil in the past decade are sputtering. Prices of commodity exports, though still high, are no longer rising. Consumers are using more of their income to pay off the loans with which they had bought cars and televisions. Low unemployment means there are fewer idle hands to be put to work. Instead of relying on consumption, growth now has to come from higher productivity and investment. That means hacking away at the “Brazil cost”: the combination of red tape, heavy taxes, expensive credit, creaking infrastructure and an overvalued currency that makes it a punishingly expensive country to do business in.

Ms Rousseff has recognised the need to improve competitiveness. Her economic team says its aim is to prompt a supply-side, investment-led recovery. In the past 15 months the Central Bank has slashed interest rates by 5.25 percentage points, to 7.25% (only two points above inflation). That has helped to weaken the currency and help manufacturers. The government has cut payroll taxes for industry (but not most services). It is also slashing electricity tariffs and inviting private operators to upgrade airports, roads and railways.

Despite all this, investment has fallen in each of the past five quarters. It now amounts to just 18.7% of GDP, against 30% in Peru in 2011 and 27% in Chile and Colombia—Latin America’s new high-growth economies.

Business is cautious because the government meddles too much. A prime example is its apparent desire to drive down the return on investment by diktat, not just for banks but also for electricity companies and other infrastructure-providers. Even more than her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Ms Rousseff seems to believe that the state should direct private investment decisions. Such micro-meddling undermines trust in macroeconomic policy as well.

Stop meddling and let animal spirits roar

The Central Bank may be tempted to react to the latest figures with another interest-rate cut. That would be a mistake. Instead the government should redouble efforts to cut the Brazil cost—by, for instance, tackling labour laws—and thus letting the private sector’s animal spirits roar. The worry is that the president herself is meddler-in-chief. But she insists she is pragmatic. If so, she should fire Mr Mantega, whose over-optimistic forecasts have lost investors’ confidence, and appoint a new team capable of regaining the trust of business.

Ms Rousseff’s hope seems to be that full employment and rising real wages will be enough to secure her a second term in 2014. But these depend on renewed growth. Lula won a second term because his policies lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty. The electorate similarly rewarded Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula’s predecessor, because he slew inflation. And Ms Rousseff? Voters may judge that in trying to juggle so many economic balls, she dropped most of them.

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Brazil’s economy

Stalled

A long-awaited recovery still fails to materialise

Dec 8th 2012 | SÃO PAULO | from the print edition

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FOR many months Guido Mantega, Brazil’s finance minister, has been forecasting that the economy is on the verge of vigorous growth that never seems to come. Even so, the third-quarter figures published on November 30th were a shock. The government had convinced independent economists that a weaker currency, lower interest rates, and a cut in sales tax on cars and white goods would prompt a healthy expansion of 1.2% compared with the previous quarter. In the event, the figure was just 0.6%. The national statistics institute also slashed its estimate of second-quarter growth, from 0.4% to 0.2%.

The numbers were “disappointing”, admitted Mr Mantega. But recovery, he insisted, is on the way: 4% growth will come next year, with 5% in 2014. Few now believe him. Analysts are slashing their predictions (see chart). Add last year’s anaemic 2.7% and Brazil is seeing its worst growth performance in over a decade.

The nastiest surprise was the fall in investment, despite the government’s efforts to lower business costs. The Central Bank has reduced the policy interest rate from 12.5% in mid-2011 to a record low of 7.25%; it has also pushed state banks to cut spreads and to lend more. A tax on foreign-currency inflows and the Central Bank’s interventions have engineered a fall in the painfully strong real of around 20% since February. The government has cut payroll taxes for manufacturers, promises a big cut in electricity tariffs, and has turned to the private sector to ease transport congestion.

All this reads like a Brazilian businessman’s dream come true. So why has the hoped-for investment boom not materialised? The government’s high-handed approach and hostile attitude towards the private sector seem to have put off the very investors it hoped to attract. Brazil’s electricity prices, for example, are the world’s third-highest and a long-standing business bugbear. But the government’s plan to cut tariffs by 20% risks misfiring because it overestimated utility firms’ margins and underestimated the rate of return they would require to renew contracts early.

Some firms have decided not to sign up, even though that means they will probably lose their concessions when they expire. Eletrobras, a state-controlled giant, bowed to the government’s wishes over those of minority shareholders—and saw its share price plummet. “I fail to see how destroying shareholder value helps to attract investment,” says Tony Volpon of Nomura Securities, a broker.

Services, long the main source of new jobs, have stalled too. Financial services were hit by higher defaults, fewer loans and tighter profit margins. But the slowdown goes wider, says Silvia Matos of the Fundaçao Getúlio Vargas, a university. Past sources of productivity gains, such as easier registration for small companies and greater access to credit, have run their course, she says.

The only good news for the government was that consumption by households is still growing, albeit at a slower pace than in the recent past. That, and keeping inflation under control, are the recipe for political popularity in Brazil. Dilma Rousseff, the president, is indeed popular. More than three-quarters of respondents in opinion polls rate her as “good” or “excellent”. One poll last month found that 26% spontaneously named her as their preferred presidential candidate in 2014—for the first time, more than cited her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Until recently she looked like a shoo-in for a second term.

But Ms Rousseff’s likeliest opponents have taken the confirmation of the economy’s continuing weakness as the starting gun for the presidential campaign. Eduardo Campos, governor of Pernambuco, a fast-growing north-eastern state, has been sounding statesmanlike on the importance of not putting off potential investors. A meeting on December 3rd of mayors from the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy, the biggest opposition group, turned into an impromptu coronation of Aécio Neves, a senator and former governor of Minas Gerais, Brazil’s third-richest state, as the party’s next leader and presidential candidate.

The following day Mr Neves spoke in the Senate about the “recklessness and folly” of the government’s actions in the electricity sector. Admittedly, one of the refusenik electricity companies is CEMIG, in which Minas Gerais’s government has a big stake. But unless Mr Mantega is finally vindicated and growth picks up soon, the economy will offer Ms Rousseff’s rivals an easy target,