Upcoming elections in October has forced Brazil to try tame inflation even in the face of negative growth for the first time since 2009, reports Team IFM
Brasilia, January 21: The dance of democracy inevitably sparks off a tiff in the passion play between politics and economic policy. With general elections looming in October, 2014, Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff seems to have opted for reining in inflation rather than boost growth which may or may not prove to be good news for voters but is certainly bad news for investors and all those who have a stake in seeing the country’s economy recover from the slowdown that it has witnessed over the last two years.
Last week, for the seventh time in eight months, Brazil Central Bank or Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) hiked its basic interest rate Selic by a more-than-expected 50 basis points to 10.50 percent even as the national statistics institute (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE)) reported in December last year that for the first time since 2009, the economy shrank 0.5 percent in the third quarter of 2013 as compared to the previous quarter.
Two days after the rate hike last Wednesday, Brazil watchers endured more bad news. The Brazilian central bank reported last Friday that its economic activity index IBC-Br, a monthly proxy for gross domestic production, declined by 0.31 percent in November from a month earlier after posting a modest expansion of 0.7 percent in October, the first month of the fourth quarter, over September.
This has not only dashed the hopes of a modest recovery in the fourth quarter of 2013 but has raised the threat of another shrinkage in the last quarter of 2013 that would technically put the economy in a recession (two consecutive quarters of shrinkage).
At least two of the five BRICS economies – Brazil and India – have been facing similar problems over the last two to three years. Both economies have slowed down and both are grappling with inflation with the result that both are facing the growth versus inflation conundrum.
Moreover, this year, both nations are going for national elections – India in April or May and Brazil in October. This has meant that political problems too are similar in both the countries. While the ruling party in India has already paid a heavy price in the recent round of state-level elections with its failure to put a clamp on inflation being one of the chief reasons for voters’ ire, the Brazilian government too saw street protests break out across the nation in June last year with citizens taking umbrage at rising costs and poor public services.
For President Rousseff, therefore, giving priority to curbing inflation is quite understandable, say analysts. While the rate of inflation has consistently remained higher than the Brazilian central bank’s target rate of 4.5 percent since the first quarter of 2013, the recent spike in the rate in December bringing it close to 6 percent forced the bank’s monetary policy committee or COPOM led by the BCB President Alexander Tombini to unanimously vote for a rate hike of as much as 50 basis points instead of the expected 0.25 percent increase.
But the rapid tightening of monetary policy since April last year from the record low interest rate of 7.25 percent to a high of 10.50 percent now has had little impact on inflation so far while at the same time it has created difficulties for voters who are having to repay housing or other bank loans. Already household indebtedness is 44 percent of income and is rising while a 21 percent debt-service to income ratio is higher than the levels in the US and many Latin American countries.
Similarly, while unemployment levels have remained at historical lows and real wages have risen despite low growth rates, going forward, any further shrinkage in the economy combined with persistent inflationary pressures will begin to impact the disposable income in the hands of the growing middle class of more than 100 million people who constitute about 52 percent of the population.
Thus the political choice of reining in inflation at the cost of growth has downside risks that Rousseff will have to deal with. On the other hand, persistent inflation has brought back fears of hyperinflation that the country had witnessed in the nineties.
According to analysts, the key factor behind both low growth and high inflation is the sluggishness of investments. Regina Nunes, president of credit-ratings firm Standard & Poor’s in Brazil is reported to have said recently that “clearly, Brazil has not been able to grow because it lacks the conditions needed to stimulate investments.”
Similarly, Neil Shearing of the London-based independent macroeconomic research firm told Financial Times that the weaker real, the Brazilian currency, cannot be blamed for the stickiness of inflation. “According to our estimates, core inflation (which excludes the price of food and energy items) is currently running at 6.2% y/y – a rate that has remained broadly unchanged for the past year. The strength of core inflation, in turn, is a result of the mismatch in Brazil’s growth model, with consumption too strong and investment too weak.” he said.
Low investment at 19.1 percent of gross Domestic Product (GDP), much below the 25 percent that economists believe is needed to boost growth, has been attributed to factors such as bureaucratic delays that have stymied infrastructure projects and a non-accommodative business environment. Tax breaks and other incentives announced by the government have also met with little success.
Analysts also believe that the upcoming elections will further delay much needed structural reforms such as those needed in the areas of indirect taxes and lower levels of trade protection as well as a speeding up of much delayed infrastructure projects. The possible adverse impact of the expected “tapering” of quantitative easing in the US on capital flows also remains a risk. The strengthening of the dollar against the Brazilian currency – real – has fuelled inflation but has made Brazilian exports more competitive. An acute shortage of skilled workers has driven real wages above productivity levels and this too is a major challenge facing the manufacturing sector which is weak and not so competitive compared to that in other major global economies.
Even then and although the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook published in October last year projects an economic growth rate of 2.5 percent for both 2013 and 2014, which would mean four consecutive years of sub-3 percent growth, the fundamentals of the Brazilian economy are strong and it is expected that growth will pick up from 2015 onwards.