$7.4 billion: that was Brazil's trade surplus in August, the best result for the month in three years, the Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services (MDIC) reported on Friday (Sept. 4). In practical terms, the country sold that much more abroad than it bought, and the dollars stayed with exporters, from soybean farmers to oil companies. The result was 23.8% higher than in August last year, when the surplus was $5.97 billion.Exports totaled $33.15 billion, up 12.2% by daily average (a comparison that adjusts for the number of business days), while imports reached $25.76 billion, up 9.2% in the same measure. Total trade flow, exports plus imports, hit $58.9 billion, the highest for any August in the historical series, according to state news agency Agência Brasil. At this week's exchange rate, near 5.10 reais to the dollar, the monthly surplus is worth more than 37 billion reais.In brief: the trade balance compares what Brazil sells abroad (exports) with what it buys from other countries (imports). When sales top purchases, the result is a surplus; when the reverse happens, a deficit. It is the same math a household does at the end of the month: if more money comes in than goes out, savings are left over.What drove the resultCrude oil led foreign sales, at $4.82 billion, up 18%. Next came soybeans ($4.41 billion, up 14%), green coffee ($1.1 billion, up 24.1%), iron ore ($2.35 billion, down 10.8%) and corn ($1 billion, down 25.3%). Beef exports fell 19.7% because Brazil hit the annual quota of 1.106 million tonnes set by China, which charges a 55% surcharge on anything above that limit.By destination, the standout was the European Union: sales rose 46.4%, to $5.8 billion. Sales to the United States grew 12.1%, to $3.19 billion, despite Washington's extra tariffs, which combined can reach 37.5%. Sales to China, Brazil's largest market, fell 10.9%, to $8.34 billion.The trade deal between the Mercosur bloc and the European Union, in effect since May, may have contributed to the surge in sales to the bloc, said Herlon Brandão, head of the MDIC's foreign trade statistics department. "We have reports from exporters who are indeed benefiting from the agreement in this period," he said. According to him, it is still too early to measure the precise effect of lower tariffs.A strong year so farEven while selling more, Brazil ran an $824 million deficit with the United States in August, as purchases of American goods, at $4.01 billion, topped sales. So far this year, the gap with the U.S. totals $3.21 billion. Overall, the January-August surplus stands at $55.3 billion, 28.2% above the $43.2 billion recorded in the same period of 2025, the second-best result for those months since records began in 1989.Imports of consumer goods rose 15% in August, a sign that Brazilians bought more foreign products. In July, the MDIC raised its 2026 surplus forecast from $72.1 billion to $90 billion. Analysts surveyed by the Focus bulletin, a weekly Central Bank poll of financial institutions, are more cautious and project $78 billion.

R$ 150 billion. That is the amount of household debt Brazil's federal government wants to renegotiate under Desenrola 3.0, launched on Friday (25) by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at an event in São Paulo. For consumers stuck with credit card bills years overdue, the plan opens a path to clear their names and pay far less than they owe.The program covers personal debts overdue for two to four and a half years in two categories: credit card balances, in both installment and revolving form, and personal loans without payroll deduction, the kind the borrower repays directly to the bank. Planning Minister Bruno Moretti said each debt must be worth up to R$ 10,000, the size of a card bill that swallows several months of a family's income.The government estimates R$ 300 billion in eligible debts in these credit types and aims to reach half of that total. The proposal is to buy the portfolios from banks at a 90% discount, at an estimated cost of about R$ 15 billion. It is as if the state paid R$ 1,000 for a R$ 10,000 debt.In plain terms: the discount, called deságio in Portuguese, is a cut applied to the face value of a debt. By buying a credit portfolio, Brazil's National Treasury acquires thousands of overdue loans in one block instead of negotiating case by case. The bigger the discount, the smaller the debtor's final bill, since Moretti said the savings will be passed on to families.The auction to buy the portfolios is scheduled for November, and the operation will be run by the Treasury or a federal financial institution. Banks willing to sell submit offers, and the one accepting the largest discount wins. "We are talking about clearing 150 billion in debt from this portfolio, it is very strong, very powerful so these families can start over," Moretti said, according to G1.What changes from earlier roundsThis is the third round of Desenrola, the government's program for renegotiating household debt. Earlier rounds covered overdue card, overdraft and personal loan debts of 90 days to two years, and each borrower negotiated alone with the bank. Now the state buys the debts in bulk, with the federal government "acquiring debt portfolios from financial institutions," Moretti explained.According to InfoMoney, the consumer's name comes off delinquency registries as soon as the government buys the debt. The borrower then renegotiates directly with the Treasury, with lower interest and installments matched to income bracket.The provisional measure, a presidential decree with immediate effect that Congress must later approve, also instructs the Central Bank to tighten rules on consumer lending to keep families from falling back into debt. "People get out of step, take on debt in a disorderly way and then cannot sort themselves out," Lula said, criticizing banks that hand "4, 5, 6 credit cards" to people already in the red. The package was announced at the same event where the government banned online betting, nine days before Brazil's presidential election.

70 gas stations will answer for abusive fuel price increases, news outlet G1 reported on Monday (Sept 21). The cases were opened by Senacon, the National Consumer Secretariat, Brazil's federal consumer protection agency inside the Ministry of Justice. For the average driver, the message is blunt: the government believes part of the price paid at the pump has no explanation in costs.Each station under investigation faces fines of up to 14 million reais, the ceiling set by Brazil's Consumer Defense Code (CDC), the main law covering relations between companies and customers in the country. That is more money than most Brazilians earn in a lifetime of work. According to G1, the inspections behind the cases took place at stations in Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, São Paulo and Paraná.In part of the inspected stations, Senacon found profit margins above 70%. The agency says abusive margin increases were detected in seven states, with similar complaints on record in 15 more. On Friday (Sept 18), the National Petroleum Agency (ANP), which regulates the sector, said it had received about 330 complaints of possible abusive price hikes and shared the data to support the inspections.What counts as an abusive price increaseFor Senacon, an abusive price increase is a hike with no justification compatible with costs or market conditions. The profit margin is the gap between what a station pays for the fuel and what it charges for it. In simple terms, a 70% margin is like a grocery store buying a sack of rice for 50 reais and selling it for 85.What happens nextSenacon has not disclosed which 70 stations are involved, nor the prices they charged or the gap from their purchase costs. An emergency meeting with consumer protection agencies from across the country is set for Tuesday (Sept 22) to coordinate joint inspections. A survey by Atlas Público, a website that tracks official acts, also records two Senacon cases opened the same day against the companies Ale Combustíveis and Larco for price increases without justification.G1 also reported that federal police are running an operation in Rio de Janeiro against a group suspected of using gas stations to launder money for organized crime. It will now be up to Senacon to conclude the administrative cases and, if violations are proven, apply the penalties set by the CDC.

The inflation Brazilian economists expect for 2026 rose from 4.92% to 4.99% in the Focus survey released on Monday (28) by the country's central bank. At that pace, a 500-real grocery basket bought in January would cost about 525 reais by late December. It was the second straight weekly increase, according to Folha de S.Paulo.In the same report, economists cut the 2026 growth forecast for GDP, the total value of goods and services produced in the country, from 1.88% to 1.86%. It was the third consecutive weekly reduction, and the lowest estimate since May. The pace is well below the 2.3% Brazil posted in 2025, according to official data from the IBGE, the national statistics agency.What the Focus survey isThe Focus bulletin is a weekly central bank survey of more than 100 banks, brokerages and consulting firms. The bank publishes the median, the middle value, of their projections for inflation, growth, interest rates and the currency. Investors watch it as a preview of market thinking ahead of official data, and as a guide for the Copom, the committee that sets Brazil's benchmark interest rate.The 4.99% forecast for the IPCA, Brazil's official consumer price index, sits above the 4.5% ceiling of the central bank's inflation target, whose center is 3%, with a tolerance band of 1.5 percentage point either way. The survey also sees 12-month inflation ending the year at 4.65%. For a worker earning 2,000 reais a month, 4.99% inflation erodes about 100 reais of purchasing power over the year.What it means for interest ratesThe benchmark rate, the Selic, stands at 13.75% a year after five cuts this year, according to G1. Even with inflation above the target ceiling, markets still expect one more cut, to 13.50% by the end of 2026, and project 12% for the end of 2027. The forecast for the exchange rate at year-end stayed at 5.20 reais per dollar.The mix complicates the central bank's job: according to G1, the war in the Middle East is keeping oil expensive, and in an election year the government's efforts to stimulate the economy make inflation harder to control. For the years ahead, Focus projects inflation of 4.31% in 2027, 3.80% in 2028 and 3.50% in 2029, all still above the 3% goal. GDP growth of 1.41% is expected for 2027, pointing to weak growth next year as well.

Economists surveyed by Brazil's Central Bank raised their 2026 inflation forecast from 4.92% to 4.99% in the weekly Focus bulletin released on Monday (28). If the estimate holds, a 300-real monthly grocery run would cost about 15 reais more after a year. It is the second straight weekly increase, after the figure moved from 4.90% to 4.92% last week, and it now sits just short of 5%.Moving in the opposite direction, the forecast for GDP growth (the total value of goods and services produced in Brazil) fell from 1.88% to 1.86%. It was the third straight cut and the lowest reading since May, according to Folha de S.Paulo. In practical terms, for every 100 reais of output today, the market expects only about 1.86 additional reais this year.How it works: the Focus comes out every Monday and gathers projections from bank and consulting-firm economists on inflation, growth, interest rates and the currency. The benchmark index is the IPCA, Brazil's official consumer price index, compiled by the national statistics agency IBGE. The Central Bank's inflation target is centered at 3% with a ceiling of 4.5%, so the 4.99% forecast sits above that limit.Interest rates and the outlookThe Selic rate expected for the end of 2026 stayed at 13.5% a year, unchanged after a cut from 13.75% in recent weeks. The Selic is Brazil's policy rate: banks use it as the benchmark to price loans, car and home financing and credit cards, always with a markup on top. On the projected path, economists see the rate at 13.75% in September, 13.63% in October and 13.5% in November, falling to 12% by the end of 2027.The exchange rate expected for the end of 2026 held at R$ 5.20 per dollar, and at R$ 5.28 for 2027. For the coming months, the market projects IPCA readings of 0.56% in September, 0.33% in October and 0.35% in November, up from a previous 0.32% estimate for the month. The inflation accumulated over 12 months expected by the market rose from 4.62% to 4.65%.Looking further out, economists expect inflation of 4.31% in 2027, 3.80% in 2028 and 3.50% in 2029, with growth of 1.41% in 2027. The news site Boletim Nacional, which tracked the data, also recorded GDP forecasts of 1.83% in 2028 and 2% in 2029, plus Selic rates of 10.5% and 10% in those years. For administered prices, such as electricity tariffs and fuels, the 2026 forecast rose from 4.61% to 4.63%.

80% of GDP. That is where Brazil's gross public debt already stands, according to Folha, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Sunday (27) that the figure causes no panic. For taxpayers, every extra point of debt means more of the federal budget going to interest payments and less left for health care, education and public works.In an interview aired on Sunday, the president pointed to the country's international reserves, worth US$ 370 billion, as a cushion against the rising debt. He credited a decision from 2005, in his first term, for building the stock, and called it a "support cushion for the Brazilian economy", in the account of the newspaper Correio do Povo. Folha reported the conversation as an interview with BandNews radio; Correio do Povo described it as recorded for Canal Livre, the Sunday interview program of Band, one of Brazil's largest broadcasters.Lula acknowledged that the rising debt worries him, because "it is not good to owe more than one earns", and promised to bring the ratio down relative to GDP. He did not detail how he plans to get there. In Folha's transcript, the president listed the spending he sees as indispensable:"How are we going to cut this public debt? First, by knowing which spending is necessary. We will keep helping the poorest, we will keep raising the minimum wage above inflation, we will keep adjusting the things that must be adjusted."In plain terms: gross debt as a share of GDP compares what the government owes with everything the country produces in a year. It is like a family earning 5,000 reais a month, or 60,000 reais a year, that owes 48,000 reais, equal to 80% of a year's income. International reserves are the country's dollar savings, an emergency fund against crises.The government's own numbersAccording to Folha, the government itself revised its projections and now sees debt near 90% of GDP in 2029, or above that if public accounts land at the floor of the fiscal target in the coming years. Lula's current term is set to end with debt 12 percentage points higher than he found when he took office in 2023, closing the year at 83.7% of GDP. In everyday terms, the country owes 12 more reais for every 100 reais of wealth it produces than it did at the start of the term.The pace of federal spending draws criticism from financial markets and the opposition because of the risk that it keeps pushing debt up. Finance Minister Dario Durigan and Budget Minister Bruno Moretti have said the government intends to seek an effective surplus starting next year. Lula, for his part, also bet on falling interest rates as a condition for economic growth, according to Correio do Povo.The messages inside the government diverge. To business leaders, Lula promises fiscal responsibility in a new term; a wing of his Workers' Party (PT) wants to expand investment. The interview came in the final stretch of the campaign, with the president running for re-election.

350 reais a year on average, about 29 reais a month. That is the extra income the tax reform cashback should deliver from 2027 to 28 million families enrolled in Cadastro Único, Brazil's registry of low-income households, according to Folha de S.Paulo. Among them are 19 million families that receive Bolsa Família, the federal government's main cash transfer program.The money comes from refunds of the CBS, the new federal consumption tax that replaces PIS, Cofins, the IOF on insurance and part of the IPI, a levy on manufactured goods, starting in January 2027. The estimate is the government's own, adjusted for inflation since Congress passed the law regulating the reform. The final figure will be set by the Receita Federal, the country's tax authority, and depends on the CBS rate: the higher the rate, the larger the refund.A calculation commissioned by Folha from Giovani Padilha, deputy undersecretary at the Rio Grande do Sul state revenue office and one of the creators of the refund program launched in that state in 2022, puts the ceiling at 354 reais next year for a family living only on Bolsa Família, assuming a 10% CBS rate. On top of the average benefit of 777 reais a month that takes effect in October, that works out to a 3.8% boost to yearly income. It is less than a quarter of the 15.04% raise granted in September, which lifted the minimum payment from 600 to 691 reais and the average from 675 to 777 reais, according to the Social Development Ministry.How the cashback worksThe cashback returns, after the purchase, part of the consumption taxes paid by low-income families, defined as those earning up to half the minimum wage per person with an active Cadastro Único registration. Under Complementary Law 214/2025, the federal government refunds 20% of the CBS paid on ordinary goods and services and 100% of the CBS embedded in electricity, water, sewage, piped gas and phone bills, plus cooking gas cylinders of up to 13 kg. Enrollment is automatic: families that meet the requirements start receiving the refund without applying.The annual cost should come close to 10 billion reais, the result of multiplying the 350-real average by the 28 million families. The outlay does not enter the fiscal framework, the set of rules that limits the growth of federal spending, because the refund is treated as an exemption or restitution and is deducted directly from tax revenue instead of being booked as an expense.The boost should grow from 2029, when the IBS, a tax shared between states and municipalities, begins replacing the ICMS and the ISS and also becomes refundable. Folha reports the expectation that the yearly cashback will double at that stage. Until then, the program remains the reform's main tool to offset the weight of consumption taxes on the poorest households.

Up to R$ 42.3 billion. That is the adjustment Brazil's 2027 federal budget may need to absorb the measures President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced in the final stretch of the campaign: a bigger Bolsa Família, the country's main cash-transfer program, a ban on online betting and the Desenrola 3.0 debt-relief plan. The estimate comes from the newspaper O Globo and from InfoMoney, and it means less room to spend for whoever wins the October 4 election in the first year of the next term.The bill adds up pieces on different timelines: R$ 22 billion in extra Bolsa Família spending in 2027, R$ 5.3 billion in tax revenue that disappears with the end of online betting, and R$ 15 billion earmarked for Desenrola 3.0, which can stretch into 2028. None of it was in the budget bill sent to Congress on August 31.The Bolsa Família raise of 15.04% lifted the minimum monthly payment from 600 to 691 reais starting in October, an extra 91 reais for each family on the floor benefit. The additional cost in 2026 is R$ 5.8 billion, since the raise covers only the final months of the year. In 2027, with twelve full months, it climbs to R$ 22 billion, nearly four times more.Finance Minister Dario Durigan defended the raise as a recovery of losses to past inflation and said the government has already begun reviewing spending to fit next year's bill.In brief: the Orçamento is Brazil's annual budget law, which sets how much each federal area may spend, and any change after the bill reaches Congress must be approved by the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. This case squeezes public accounts from two sides at once: higher spending on benefits and programs, and lower revenue after the betting ban. Even if the new expenses fit under the legal spending limit, the lost revenue must be replaced with other taxes or with cuts.The betting ban and Desenrola 3.0The ban on online betting sites, known in Brazil as bets, came through a provisional decree, a measure that takes effect at once but needs congressional approval within 120 days, published in a special edition of the official gazette on Friday (25), nine days before the election, according to G1. Players can withdraw balances until 11:59 p.m. on October 5, and from October 6 the sites and apps go offline. Planning and Budget Minister Bruno Moretti estimates the ban will cost R$ 5.3 billion in foregone revenue in 2027, less than a tenth of the R$ 62.5 billion that betting drained from Brazilian family budgets in 2025, according to Comsefaz, the council of state finance secretaries.In Desenrola 3.0, the federal government will buy portfolios of personal debts at auction, with a minimum 90% discount, and pass the discount on to borrowers. The program targets up to R$ 150 billion in overdue debts of up to 10,000 reais per loan, with a spending ceiling of R$ 15 billion: for every real of debt bought, the state would spend at most ten cents. Moretti said disbursements start in 2027 and the cost must respect the rules that cap public spending.How the government says it will payThe government says it will fit the new expenses inside the fiscal rules by reallocating and reviewing spending, which means deciding which areas lose resources. The strategy announced by Moretti is to cut spending elsewhere without raising the total. The final effect on public accounts will depend on actual disbursements and on the compensations adopted.

Taxes on online gambling firms, known in Brazil as bets, have brought the federal government R$ 15.3 billion since January 2025, according to figures from the federal Revenue Service released on Friday (25). In practical terms, the money helped President Lula's administration meet its fiscal targets without squeezing the budget even harder. The number surfaced on the same day Lula, by provisional decree, banned online betting and virtual games nationwide, nine days before the first round of the presidential election.Collection totaled R$ 8.94 billion in 2025, and another R$ 6.32 billion came in between January and August 2026, an average of roughly R$ 760 million a month. For scale, a survey by Comsefaz, the council of state finance secretaries, estimates that betting drained R$ 62.5 billion from Brazilian household budgets in 2025 alone. ANJL, the association that represents the industry, disputes the study and says the market's gross revenue last year was R$ 37 billion, based on Treasury figures.Collection only became systematic in 2025. Until then, only residual amounts reached public coffers because most betting companies were headquartered abroad, as Revenue Service chief Robinson Barreirinhas told Congress in September 2024. Under the regulatory framework, companies had to incorporate under Brazilian law, and since early 2025 only firms authorized by the Finance Ministry may operate in the country.How the betting tax workedThe rate charged this year was 13% on net gaming revenue, the so-called GGR: what is left of the bets after prizes are paid to players. It was scheduled to rise gradually, reaching 18% from 2028. Of the money collected, 36% went to sports, 28% to tourism and 13.6% to public security, with smaller shares for education, social security and health.What happens to the money nowThe ban dries up this revenue stream. According to InfoMoney, the end of online betting should remove about R$ 800 million a month from federal coffers, close to the average collected since 2025. The provisional decree, a temporary measure with the force of law, takes effect immediately, but Congress must approve it within 120 days for it to remain valid.The revenue had been helping the government hit its fiscal targets, that is, the primary result, the balance between revenue and spending set in law; without it, spending blocks would have had to be larger. The central argument for the ban, though, is the household budget. "I will have the immense pleasure of putting an end to the bets," Lula said on Wednesday (23) as he announced his intention.A report by BTG Pactual estimates that 25.2 million Brazilians placed bets in 2025, nearly one in every eight people. By Goldman Sachs' calculations, betting rose from 0.3% of monthly household consumption in 2018 to 4.4% in 2025: in a home that spends R$ 1,000 a month, R$ 44 went to betting platforms. Recent surveys cited by InfoMoney show about three quarters of Brazilians support a total ban.

Brazil's mid-month inflation index, the IPCA-15, rose 0.70% in September, the national statistics agency IBGE said on Friday (25). For consumers, it means a shopping basket that cost 1,000 reais in mid-August cost about 7 reais more a month later. It is the biggest September reading in five years, since 2021, when it hit 1.14%.The result beat every forecast from financial market analysts. The median of estimates compiled by Bloomberg was 0.55%, and even the top guess, 0.66%, fell short of the official number, according to Folha de S.Paulo. Estimates compiled by Reuters were around 0.53%, reports the news site g1.Power bills rise againResidential electricity prices jumped 7.42% in September, after falling 6.25% in August. On a 150-real monthly bill, that is about 11 reais more. The increase follows the end of the Itaipu bonus, a temporary discount on power bills that had pushed the index into negative territory in August (-0.40%).Housing, the group that includes electricity, water and gas, had the largest rise among the nine surveyed (2.07%) and the biggest single impact on the index. Food prices rose again (0.40%) after two months of declines. Tomatoes (20.76%), rice (2.39%) and meats (1.30%) got more expensive, while carioca beans (6.33%) and onions (4.41%) fell.All nine groups surveyed rose over the month. Cigarettes (14%) and air fares (9.82%) also weighed on the index.What the index is: the IPCA-15 is a preview of the IPCA, Brazil's official inflation index. It tracks prices collected between August 15 and September 15, while the full IPCA covers the whole month. The final September figure is due on October 9.Close to the target ceilingOver 12 months, the index accelerated from 4.24% to 4.47%. In practical terms, the same basket of goods now costs about 134 reais more per month for a household spending 3,000 reais. That is close to the 4.5% ceiling of the tolerance band around the Central Bank's 3% inflation target, as Folha noted.This was the last IPCA-15 release before the first round of Brazil's presidential election on October 4. The cost of living is a central campaign theme: candidate Flávio Bolsonaro uses high prices to attack President Lula, who is seeking a fourth term and points to job and income growth since 2023, according to Folha.

It is R$ 2.12 per liter. That is what the Brazilian government is putting up to hold down the price of diesel, and the subsidy should stay in place for another 30 days, Planning and Budget Minister Bruno Moretti said on Thursday (24). On a 50-liter fill-up the subsidy adds up to R$ 106, relief that reaches truckers and freight companies and, further down the line, the transport costs built into food prices.Moretti spoke to reporters in Brasília at a press conference laying out this year's budget execution projections. "We will take it to the president, but given the indicators, the trend is for us to keep [the subsidy]," he said. The final call depends on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the announcement is expected by the end of this week, days before the first round of Brazil's presidential election, according to Folha de S.Paulo.The calendar is tight. The provisional measure that provides R$ 1.12 of the R$ 2.12 total loses effect on Saturday (26), which would cut the benefit to less than half without an extension. The remaining R$ 1.00 was created in early September under a measure that lets the government adjust the subsidy's total amount, Folha reports.What the subsidy isA subvention, or subvenção, is public money used to offset part of a product's cost and keep the price paid by consumers down, in this case diesel, the fuel of the trucks that carry most of Brazil's cargo. A provisional measure, or MP, is a decree issued by the president with temporary force of law: if Congress does not approve it within 120 days, it lapses, which is what Folha says is set to happen on Saturday.The cause is external. According to Reuters, the government still aims to withdraw the subsidy once the oil price shock caused by the war in the Middle East dissipates. Until then, the benefit remains a buffer against the rise in oil prices.The bill for the public treasury is not small. Zeroing PIS/Cofins, two federal taxes charged on fuels, on hydrous ethanol and gasoline, a move announced in early September alongside the extra R$ 1.00 for diesel, should cost about R$ 2 billion a month, Folha reports. That works out to more than R$ 65 million a day.

R$ 691. That is the new floor of Bolsa Família, Brazil's main cash-transfer program, starting in October, according to the Planning Ministry. Families on the minimum payment will get R$ 91 more per month, a 15% increase, and the average benefit will rise from R$ 675 to R$ 777, an extra R$ 102 for the household budget, also 15%.President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced the raise last week, in the middle of his re-election campaign, and on Thursday (24) his economic team wrote it into the 2026 budget. The change appears in the fourth bimonthly revenue and spending report released by the Planning Ministry. According to news site G1, the raise costs R$ 5.8 billion this year, about one third of the R$ 16.1 billion that remains frozen in the budget.A bigger deficitTo make room for the new spending, the government raised its estimate for this year's deficit from R$ 52 billion to R$ 67.3 billion, or from 0.38% to 0.49% of GDP, G1 reported. That R$ 15.3 billion jump alone is more than twice the cost of the Bolsa Família raise in 2026. The estimate now sits at the limit allowed by Brazil's fiscal framework.In short: the fiscal framework is the rule approved in 2023 that caps the growth of public spending. This year's target is a primary surplus, money left over before debt interest payments, of 0.25% of GDP, about R$ 34.3 billion, but the rule allows a 0.25 point tolerance band that accepts a zero result. G1 also reports that up to R$ 67.3 billion in spending on precatórios, court-ordered federal debt payments, and other expenses can be excluded from the calculation.Freezes and releasesNewspaper Folha de S.Paulo reports that the freeze on ministry funds fell from R$ 17.9 billion to R$ 16.1 billion. The government released R$ 15.5 billion because it now expects lower spending on pensions, payroll and the BPC, a benefit paid to poor elderly and disabled Brazilians. At the same time, the economic team ordered its first spending holdback of the year, R$ 13.6 billion, because the primary balance projection swung from a R$ 10.8 billion surplus to a R$ 13.6 billion deficit.The report also points to a theoretical release of R$ 1.9 billion for the ministries, but Planning Minister Bruno Moretti said the money will not go out for now. Folha adds that the adjustment offsets weak revenue, including a dividend tax that collected far less than the nearly R$ 29 billion promised, a gap already flagged by the TCU, the federal audit court, plus R$ 3.9 billion less in dividends from state-owned companies."For now, I will not release it. I will examine the requests from the agencies. It is prudent that we keep a margin. (...) The funds will be released if there is a need to do so," Moretti said.

Brazil's Central Bank lowered its growth forecast for this year from 2% to 1.8% and issued its first estimate for 2027: an expansion of just 1.4%. The figures come from the bank's third-quarter Monetary Policy Report, released on Thursday (24). In practical terms, the country should produce, hire and hand out raises more slowly than in 2025, when GDP grew 2.3% according to IBGE, the national statistics agency.To size up the slowdown: the gap between 2025's 2.3% and the 1.4% projected for 2027 is 0.9 of a percentage point. On a monthly salary of R$ 4,000 (roughly 775 dollars), that would come to about R$ 36. It is as if the whole economy were getting a slightly smaller raise each year.Why the cutThe bank said this year's downgrade reflects early third-quarter indicators pointing to weaker activity and a "less favorable growth composition" in the second quarter. GDP came in slightly above expectations in the April-June period, but carried by sectors that depend little on household spending."Although the aggregate GDP result slightly exceeded expectations, the positive surprises were concentrated in segments less sensitive to the economic cycle, notably agriculture and extractive industry. The more cyclical supply sectors and household consumption, in turn, surprised in the opposite direction," the bank wrote.In plain words, farming and mining held up the result, while household consumption fell short.In brief: GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the sum of all goods and services produced in the country, from the corner bakery to a phone app. The Monetary Policy Report is the quarterly document in which the Central Bank explains its interest rate decisions and publishes its official forecasts for growth and inflation.High rates and fading stimulus in 2027For 2027, the first year of the next presidential term, the bank expects "moderate expansion" and lists the brakes: interest rates held at "contractionary" levels, high enough to restrain consumption and investment; little idle capacity, with factories and services running close to their limit; an uncertain external scenario; and waning fiscal and credit impulses. It also expects a smaller contribution from agriculture and mining, the two sectors that powered this year's growth.In this election year, the government tried to speed the economy up with subsidized credit lines for truck drivers, taxi drivers, small entrepreneurs, home renovation and debt renegotiation. The bank expects that push to fade next year.The benchmark interest rate, the Selic, which shapes installment plans and savings returns, stands at 13.75% a year after five straight cuts, and remains among the world's highest in real terms, as g1 reported. The bank also does not expect inflation to return to the center of its 3% annual target before 2029, according to Folha de S.Paulo. On the horizon the bank watches when calibrating rates, the first quarter of 2028, its projection is 3.2%.A clash with the 2027 budgetThe bank's projections sit below the government's own math, and the gap costs money. The Finance Ministry expects 2.3% growth in 2027, a figure revised down this week, while the budget bill sent to Congress in late August assumes 2.46%, g1 reported. Market economists, polled in the weekly Focus survey run by the Central Bank and published on Monday (21), expect 1.43%, nearly in line with the monetary authority.Lower GDP means lower tax revenue. The Independent Fiscal Institution (IFI), a Senate body that audits public accounts, projects a deficit of R$ 86.1 billion (about 16.7 billion dollars) for 2027, against a surplus of R$ 18.6 billion forecast by the economic team. To meet its fiscal target, the next administration will have to freeze spending at the start of the term, the IFI says.

About 80% of the diesel Brazil imported in September came from the United States, according to the daily Folha de S.Paulo. On Wednesday, the news site Politico reported that the White House is finalizing a plan to bar US exports of the fuel for 90 days, and the combination set off alarms in the Brazilian market. Diesel moves the trucks that carry food and supplies in Brazil, so a squeeze on supply tends to show up first in freight costs and then in grocery bills.In the US, the fuel cost the equivalent of US$ 1.72 a liter on Wednesday ($6.52 a gallon of 3.79 liters), 76% more than a year ago and 91 cents higher than a week earlier, according to figures from the automobile association AAA cited by InfoMoney. It is as if a fill-up that cost R$ 300 (about $58) a year ago came to more than R$ 500 today. The White House wants energy prices down before the midterm elections in November, the vote for Congress in which polls point to a strong win for the Democratic Party.The plan has critics in the oil industry, in Congress and inside the administration itself. According to Politico, producers warn that short-term relief would be offset by higher prices later, including jet fuel, because refineries would cut output once they lose foreign customers; one source described an "apocalyptic concern" about pump prices inside the White House. Donald Trump is inclined to announce the measure this week, and if it goes through it will be the first restriction on US energy exports since 2015, when then-president Barack Obama ended a decades-old ban on crude oil sales abroad.Why Brazil is exposedBrazil refines most of the diesel it burns, but the shortfall comes from abroad, and mostly from the Americans. Last October the country imported 1.6 billion liters of the fuel, according to the ANP, the national oil and fuels regulator; for this October, Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, has already bought 650 million liters abroad, less than half the volume of a year ago. October is the peak month for consumption, when farms plant the summer crop and the newly harvested corn reaches consumers by truck.Understand: an export ban does not shut down US refineries; it only changes where the fuel goes. The diesel that would have been shipped to buyers like Brazil stays in the US market, prices there fall and prices elsewhere rise, because importers end up competing for a smaller pool of supply. That is why analysts quoted by the American press say the measure relieves US consumers in the short run and makes fuel more expensive everywhere else, Brazil included.Companies say they are readyPetrobras logistics director Angélica Laureano said purchases for October "are already done" and that no large imports are expected in November, when the Repar refinery in the state of Paraná returns from scheduled maintenance. Ernesto Pousada, president of Vibra, Brazil's largest fuel distributor, said the company can raise imports even paying 2 to 3 reais more per liter abroad, a gap that would add about R$ 180 (roughly $35) to a 60-liter tank. In his view, the main effect would be on prices, not on availability: suppliers that traditionally sold to Brazil have already left the market, "and at no point was there a shortage of diesel for our clients".

$10,000, about 51,000 reais, is the threshold from which crypto transfers in Brazil will now be reported to the Coaf, the country's financial intelligence council. The Central Bank announced on Wednesday (23) that transfers of that size or larger in self-custodied wallets, the ones users control themselves, must be communicated starting October 1. In practice, an investor who puts in a few hundred reais a month and keeps the coins at an exchange notices no change.The BC says the change improves rules against money laundering and terrorism financing. Information about these wallets is currently lower than for assets held by institutions authorized by the central bank, which limits monitoring. Most measures take effect on October 1, and items related to data transmission only apply from January 1, 2027."The changes aim to strengthen the security and integrity of the virtual asset market, while providing greater predictability for sector participants and allowing the proper processing of the information necessary for supervision," the BC said in a statement.What it means: a self-custodied wallet is one where the user holds the keys to the assets directly, with no exchange or bank in between. The Coaf, the Council for Financial Activities Control, centralizes reports on financial system operations to fight money laundering. To size the threshold: someone saving 500 reais a month would need eight and a half years to reach 51,000 reais.What else changesForeign exchange operations involving physical foreign currency of $10,000 or more will also be automatically reported to the Coaf. The BC says the goal is a more uniform regulatory treatment for this segment. Authorized institutions also get an updated operational deadline to stop dealing with entities that neither hold BC authorization nor are seeking it.The decision completes the regulation of virtual asset service providers created in November 2025. At the time, the BC began requiring formal authorization before companies could start operating, with minimum capital between 10.8 million and 37 million reais, depending on the services offered. That is roughly 210 to 725 times the new 51,000-real reporting threshold.The companies fall into three types: intermediaries, which only connect trades; custodians, which hold the assets; and brokerages, which do both. Under the 2025 rules, they must clearly disclose risks, fees and security policies. They must also assess each client's risk profile before allowing more complex operations, according to InfoMoney.

7.9% of employed Brazilians worked mainly from home in 2025, the federal statistics agency IBGE said on Wednesday. That is 6.6 million people aged 14 and over, roughly the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro. In practical terms, in a team of 100 people about eight now work from home, two more than before 2020.The figure comes from the PNAD Contínua, the household survey IBGE uses to track employment. It was stable against 2024 and remains above the 5.8% of 2019, the last year before the pandemic. The series peaked in 2022 at 8.4%.While home work has leveled off, office work has grown. The share of workers based at their employer's premises rose from 57.9% in 2022 to 60.2% in 2025, six in every ten workers. Another 13.8% work in places set by the employer or the client, 8.4% on farms, 5% in vehicles and 2.1% on streets or public areas.How IBGE makes the countExplainer: the PNAD Contínua is the survey IBGE runs every month in thousands of households to measure employment and income. The module released this week records where each person works most often, according to IBGE researcher William Araujo Kratochwill. A hybrid employee with three home days and two office days therefore counts as a home worker, and the reverse also holds.The series shows a lasting shift. In 2012, the first year of measurement, only 3.6% of workers were based at home, less than half the current share. IBGE suspended this module in 2020 and 2021 because of pandemic restrictions, so the true peak of remote work cannot be measured.Porto Alegre leads as offices refillThe map of remote work is uneven. Ceará (10.7%), the Federal District (10.6%) and Rio de Janeiro state (10.1%) all passed the 10% mark in 2025, while Acre (3.6%), Rondônia (4.1%) and Mato Grosso (4.5%) stayed below 5%. Among state capitals, Porto Alegre leads with 18.7%, nearly one worker in five, and Porto Velho has the lowest rate at 4.2%; the city of São Paulo stands at 9.3% and the state at 8.1%, according to Folha de S.Paulo.The return to offices has reasons and costs. A Robert Half survey cited by g1 shows construction and engineering workers spend an average of 4.8 days a week on site, against 3.3 in services. In a WeWork survey, 65% of on-site workers call the commute the main drawback, an expense of time and transport that Beatriz Kawakami, a business manager at WeWork Brazil, calls a "silent cost".

7.9% of employed Brazilians did most of their work from home in 2025, according to figures released on Wednesday by the IBGE, Brazil's national statistics agency. That adds up to 6.6 million people aged 14 and over, about the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The share sits above the pre-pandemic level of 5.8% recorded in 2019.In practical terms, in a team of 100 people, eight now spend most of the week working from home. In 2019, before Covid-19, it was six out of 100, and when the survey series began in 2012 it was fewer than four (3.6%). The level was stable compared with 2024, Folha de S.Paulo reports.Work from home peaked at 8.4% in 2022 and has slipped since. The share working at a fixed company location rose from 57.9% in 2022 to 60.2% in 2025, according to news site g1, while other workers are spread across sites set by employers or clients (13.8%), farms and ranches (8.4%), motor vehicles (5%) and streets or public areas (2.1%).What it means: the PNAD Contínua is Brazil's main employment survey; IBGE interviewers visit thousands of households every month, and the annual module released this week asks where each person works most often. Under that rule, a hybrid worker with three days at home and two at the office counts as remote. The module was not collected in 2020 or 2021, at the height of the pandemic, so the true peak of remote work cannot be measured.Where remote work is strongestThe state map shows sharp contrasts. Ceará (10.7%), the Federal District (10.6%) and Rio de Janeiro state (10.1%) all top 10% of the workforce at home. At the other end, Acre (3.6%), Rondônia (4.1%) and Mato Grosso (4.5%) stay below 5%, and São Paulo state sits at 8.1%, close to the national average.Among state capitals the gap is wider. Porto Alegre leads with 18.7% of workers at home, nearly one in five. Porto Velho has the lowest rate, 4.2%, and the city of São Paulo stands at 9.3%, Folha reports.The return to the officeOther surveys cited by g1 show that the return to on-site work has largely been a company decision. In a survey by WeWork with Offerwise, 63% of workers are on site, and 79% of them follow the model because the company requires it. The commute is the top complaint: 65% name the trip as the main drawback, and more than half say they spend more on transport since going back.WeWork Brasil business manager Beatriz Kawakami calls this a "silent cost": it does not show up on a pay slip, but it eats into free time and household budgets. Fully remote job postings have also lost ground on hiring platforms, according to recruitment firm Gupy, while on-site and hybrid openings dominate. In construction and engineering, workers average 4.8 days per week on site, against 3.3 in services, says consultancy Robert Half.

R$ 10.5 billion, roughly US$ 2 billion. That is what Brazil's Receita Federal, the federal tax authority, now expects to collect this year from the new tax on dividends, less than half the R$ 29 billion projected when the levy was created, according to Folha de S.Paulo. For ordinary taxpayers nothing changes right away: the tax is charged as before, and the shortfall lands on the Treasury, which had counted on that money to offset the cost of exempting more workers from income tax.The revision was announced on Tuesday (22) by Claudemir Malaquias, head of the tax and customs studies center at the Receita Federal. The previous estimate, R$ 17.2 billion, came out about two months ago, so the forecast has fallen by R$ 6.7 billion in eight weeks.In everyday terms, R$ 10.5 billion is a little over R$ 50 per resident. From January to August the tax brought in R$ 4.03 billion, according to the tax office, about R$ 2 of every R$ 1,000 collected by the federal government, which raised R$ 2.019 trillion over those eight months.Why the estimate fellIn plain terms: dividends are the slice of profit that companies distribute to shareholders and partners. Since the start of this year, payments above R$ 50,000 carry a 10% income tax, and the same rate applies to profits remitted abroad. Until then, dividends were exempt.Of the total collected through August, R$ 2.615 billion came from dividends above R$ 50,000 paid in Brazil and R$ 1.415 billion from the 10% levy on money sent overseas. The reason for the gap was already known to the tax office: many companies rushed out profit payments last year, before the tax took effect, to avoid the charge. "Every month the amounts collected kept growing. Statistically, we are making an inference that it will keep growing until the end of the year, which gives us the R$ 10 billion," Malaquias said.The gap against the original forecast totals R$ 18.5 billion that will not reach this year's budget as planned. Malaquias said the new figures will feed the fiscal projections the government presents this week. The revision arrives in the same week as a strong revenue report: August collections reached R$ 235.5 billion, a record for the month and a real increase of 8.25% over August 2025, according to Agência Brasil.

Brazil's Finance Ministry, the Fazenda, now expects the economy to grow 2% this year, down from the 2.3% forecast in July. The cut lands on paychecks: on a monthly salary of 3,000 reais, a 2% raise means 60 reais more, not the 69 reais of the old forecast. That is 108 reais less over a year, and slower growth usually brings fewer new jobs and tougher salary negotiations.The revision came in the Macro-Fiscal Bulletin released on Tuesday (22). Services, the sector that runs from barbers to delivery apps, lost the most ground, with the projection cut from 2.4% to 1.8%, which the government blamed on a weak first half and the slow pass-through of high interest rates to demand. Industry slipped from 2.1% to 1.7%, while farming rose from 1.8% to 2.8%.The weight of household debtHousehold debt is the core reason for the cut. "Although household indebtedness remains stable as a share of income, commitment to debt service reached the highest level of the historical series in the second quarter," the ministry said. In plain terms: the slice of the paycheck that goes to installments has never been larger, leaving less for shopping, restaurants and travel.Not everything points down. The bulletin cites a still-firm job market and the wider income tax exemption, which leaves more money in workers' pockets in the second half of the year, as factors cushioning the slowdown.In brief: the Macro-Fiscal Bulletin comes out every two months from the ministry's Economic Policy Secretariat and carries the official growth and inflation estimates that guide the federal budget. The GDP it refers to is the sum of everything the country produces in a year. Growth of 2% means producing 20 reais more for every 1,000 reais generated the year before.Inflation and 2027The inflation forecast for this year also fell, from 5.1% to 4.9% for the IPCA, Brazil's official consumer price index. The change is small on a shopping bill: a 500-real grocery basket would end the year at 524.50 reais instead of 525.50. July's IPCA came in below expectations, helped by calmer food-at-home prices.For 2027, the growth forecast dropped from 2.5% to 2.3%, while inflation was revised up from 3.6% to 3.8% because of El Niño pressure on next year's harvest. According to Reuters, the ministry now assumes a slightly higher average Selic, the central bank's benchmark rate that sets the price of credit and installments, with a slower pace of cuts. Oil also weighs: the average Brent projection rose from 79.2 to 87.7 dollars a barrel this year, a consequence of the conflict between the United States and Iran.

Brazil's federal government collected R$ 235.6 billion in taxes and contributions in August, the biggest figure for the month since the tax authority's records began in 1995. News portal G1 reports R$ 235.6 billion, while state-run Agência Brasil puts the figure at R$ 235.5 billion. For ordinary Brazilians, it means the treasury that funds the Bolsa Família welfare program and public health care took in more money in a year when government accounts remain in the red.Adjusted for inflation, revenue grew 8.25% from August last year, when it reached R$ 217.6 billion in today's values. Put simply, for every 100 reais that came in a year ago, 108.25 came in now. The extra R$ 18 billion or so is more than half of the R$ 34.3 billion surplus the government hopes to show for the whole year.The tax authority credits the result to economic growth, Agência Brasil reports: higher sales lifted PIS and Cofins, taxes charged on company revenue, while higher wages and profits boosted income tax withheld from paychecks and corporate taxes (IRPJ and CSLL). Tax increases approved under President Lula also weighed in, including levies on offshore accounts and exclusive investment funds, the return of payroll taxes and a new charge on "bets", the online gambling companies. Oil helped too: with barrels more expensive because of the war between the United States and Iran, the export tax on crude oil alone brought in R$ 1.9 billion in August.In plain terms: federal revenue is everything Brazil's central government collects in taxes and contributions, from income tax to the IOF, a tax on financial transactions. It does not include state and municipal taxes. A "real" increase means the value grew even after discounting inflation, so the treasury gained purchasing power rather than just bigger numbers.From January to August, revenue totaled R$ 2.11 trillion before inflation adjustment, or R$ 2.13 trillion in deflated values, a real increase of 7.12% over the same period of 2025, when it stood at R$ 1.98 trillion, according to G1. It is also a record for the period. Agência Brasil, counting only revenue administered by the tax authority, reports R$ 2.019 trillion.Why the record still does not balance the booksEven with the strong collections, the government is expected to end 2026 in the red. The official target is a surplus of 0.25% of GDP, about R$ 34.3 billion, but the fiscal framework allows the government to exclude R$ 57.8 billion in spending, such as precatórios, court-ordered debt payments. On that math, the forecast is a real shortfall of R$ 23.3 billion, and accounts would stay negative through President Lula's entire third term, G1 reports.A warning came alongside the record. Claudemir Malaquias, head of the tax authority's Center for Tax and Customs Studies, said the expected take from a new tax on people earning over R$ 600,000 a year has fallen to R$ 10.5 billion this year, from R$ 29 billion originally projected. That money was meant to pay for exempting from income tax those who earn up to R$ 5,000 a month, and the government must announce another funding source in a budget report due Thursday (24).

Brazil's benchmark interest rate, the Selic, stands at 13.75% a year, and the central bank now says those high borrowing costs are visibly slowing the economy: in minutes released on Tuesday (22), the rate-setting committee Copom judged that activity is losing steam under monetary policy, while inflation is falling. For households, the message cuts both ways. Credit and installment plans remain expensive, but grocery bills are rising more slowly.The document covers the meeting held last week, when the committee cut the rate from 14% to 13.75%, its fifth straight reduction. The clearest sign of the slowdown is second-quarter GDP (the sum of all goods and services produced in the country): growth of 0.5% from the previous three months, less than half the 1.1% posted at the start of the year, according to statistics agency IBGE. Weaker household consumption dragged the figure down."The most recent GDP reading, referring to the second quarter of 2026, confirmed the deceleration pointed to by other indicators and revealed that the movement was more intense in the economic activities and demand components most sensitive to the business cycle," the minutes say.Expensive credit cools consumptionCredit tells the same story. In free-market loans, where banks and clients negotiate rates freely, the minutes record a slowdown in longer-term lines such as auto financing. The exception is directed credit, cheaper loans backed by government rules, which keeps expanding, above all in mortgages, after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration launched measures to spur consumption in an election year.Context: Copom is the committee of central bank directors that sets the Selic, the base interest rate of the Brazilian economy. When the Selic rises, borrowing gets costlier, loans, investment and consumption cool, and pressure on prices eases; that is how the central bank chases its inflation target. The minutes, released days after each meeting, show how directors reasoned through the decision.Inflation falls, with temporary helpOn prices, the minutes point to falling consumer inflation, both in the headline index and in core measures, which filter out volatile items to reveal the trend. The IPCA, Brazil's official consumer price index, has accumulated 4.22% over the 12 months through August: a basket that cost 100 reais a year ago now costs 104.22 reais. The figure is still above the 3% target, but within the tolerance band, which runs from 1.5% to 4.5%.The drop, though, had a temporary push: electricity bills fell on a bonus from the Itaipu dam, which will not repeat. "Although monetary policy is contributing decisively to the disinflation process, inflation remains pressured by demand, requiring monetary policy to maintain its restrictive character," the minutes say. The document also warns that fiscal slippage and the expansion of directed credit can raise the interest rate needed to contain prices.Projections remain above target at every horizon, the minutes note: financial markets estimate 4.92% for 2026, 4.3% for 2027 and 3.80% for 2028, according to news outlet G1. Faced with that, the central bank promised "perseverance, firmness and serenity" and avoided signaling its next move. Markets, however, are already betting on one more cut this year, with the Selic ending 2026 at 13.50% a year.

Brazil's benchmark interest rate, the Selic, fell to 13.75% a year last week, the fifth straight cut by the Central Bank's rate-setting committee, the Copom, and the minutes released on Tuesday gave no hints about what comes next. For households paying off a car, a mortgage or credit card debt, the message is slow relief: borrowing stays expensive until inflation returns to target. The Central Bank reaffirmed it will run monetary policy with "perseverance, firmness and serenity".In practice, the committee committed to keeping "adequate restriction", jargon for rates still high enough to cool spending and prices. By not signaling future cuts, the bank left the door open to decide at each meeting as the scenario evolves, and markets now bet on one more cut this year, with the Selic ending 2026 at 13.50%, according to the news outlet G1. The key passage of the minutes reads:"In the current context of historically high uncertainty, with asymmetric risks to the upside for prices, the Committee reiterates that the magnitude of the calibration cycle [the setting of rates] will be adjusted in light of how the scenario evolves, so as to maintain adequate restriction to ensure the convergence of inflation to the target"Prices still rise faster than the targetConsumer inflation, measured by the IPCA index, stands at 4.22% in the 12 months through August, according to IBGE data cited by Folha de S.Paulo, helped by a temporary Itaipu bonus that lowered electricity bills. In daily terms, a family spending 500 reais a month on groceries is paying roughly 21 reais more than a year ago. That is more than 40% above the center of the inflation target, set at 3%, though still inside the 4.5% ceiling of the tolerance band.Explainer: the Selic is the price of money in Brazil's economy, the reference banks use to price loans and financing. Keeping it at 13.75% means every 1,000 reais borrowed at that annual rate costs about 137.50 reais over twelve months, before bank fees and spreads. Rate moves take six to 18 months to fully reach the economy, and the burden falls hardest on poorer households, as G1 notes.Economy cooling, expectations notHigh rates are already braking the economy: GDP grew 0.5% in the second quarter, less than half the 1.1% of the first, dragged down by household consumption, and longer-term bank credit lines have slowed, Folha reports. Even so, inflation projections remain above target at every horizon: markets estimate 4.92% for 2026, 4.3% for 2027 and 3.80% for 2028. The minutes also cite higher oil prices tied to the Middle East conflict: the committee will not react to the first-round effect of the shock, but will respond "with firmness" if second-round effects on prices emerge.The final message goes to the government: the committee calls for "harmonious fiscal and monetary policies" and warns that expanding subsidized credit and uncertainty over the stabilization of public debt can push up the economy's interest rates. The bank also keeps its "firm conviction that policies must be predictable, credible and countercyclical".

With 100% of shareholders in favor and the blessing of creditors holding 400 million reais (about US$ 78 million) in debt, JBS approved on Monday (21) the closure of JBS S.A.'s capital in Brazil and asked the CVM, the country's securities regulator, to cancel its registration as a publicly listed company. For ordinary investors the practical effect is small: the stock keeps trading on the B3, the São Paulo exchange, now issued by JBS N.V., a Netherlands-based company, and backed by shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange.The 400 million reais that unlocked the decision correspond to debentures, debt securities that companies sell to investors. According to Folha de S.Paulo, all 400,000 favorable votes came from Itaú Unibanco, which holds the entire debenture issue, with no votes against and no abstentions. The amount is small for the world's largest meatpacker, owner of the Friboi, Seara and Swift brands found on Brazilian supermarket shelves, which operates in 17 countries and serves 300,000 clients in nearly 200 nations, according to InvestNews.In plain terms: category A registration lets a company sell shares and other securities in Brazilian regulated markets, while category B covers debt issuance, such as the debentures JBS will keep offering only to professional investors. With the cancellation, JBS S.A. stops being the listed issuer in the country, a role that now belongs to JBS N.V., which already trades BDRs on the B3 under the code JBSS32. A BDR is a receipt traded in reais that represents a share listed abroad, in this case on the New York Stock Exchange.Two decades until the exitThe decision comes almost two decades after JBS first listed on the Brazilian exchange, a span in which a child born then has come of age. The path started in June last year, when the company completed a dual listing, a structure in which the same shares circulate on two exchanges at once. Since then, the stock that traded on the B3 under the code JBSS3 became BDRs tied to shares listed in New York.The exit still depends on a formal review by the CVM, based on Resolution 80 of 2022, which sets the rules for registering and deregistering issuers. Until a final decision, the company remains obligated to disclose information to the market, including material facts, according to Poder360. JBS says the creditors' approval is not a debt renegotiation and that rights, obligations and guarantees under the issuance deed remain valid.The move coincides with a leadership change scheduled for January 2027, when Wesley Batista Filho becomes CEO, replacing Gilberto Tomazoni. Last week, the Batista family conglomerate, J&F, asked the CVM for category B registration, which allows debt issuance without opening capital to share trading, according to InvestNews. The same outlet notes that the cancellation does not change the securities traded on the B3 and the New York Stock Exchange, since the issuer of the shares has been JBS N.V. since the dual listing.

Up to 37.5%. That is the top surcharge the United States now collects on Brazilian goods, and it was the core issue in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's interview with CNN on Monday (21) in New York. Speaking to journalist Christiane Amanpour, Lula said Donald Trump "acts like an emperor" and that he is weighing how to apply reciprocity if talks over the tariff package stall.The number reaches household budgets indirectly, but it does reach them. For every US$1,000 in goods sold to the US, up to US$375 is held back as tax at the American border, making Brazilian products pricier than rival goods from other countries. Factories and farms that rely on exports feel the effect in orders, output and jobs.Lula reprised a criticism he has made on earlier trips. According to G1, he described Trump's stance as "the law of the strongest"; he told Folha de S.Paulo that the Republican "has the right to govern the United States, but not the right to govern other countries". On CNN he called unilateralism "very dangerous" and defended multilateralism, with balanced trade among countries."He acts like an emperor. It is a way of governing that I do not agree with. When you say: 'I am strong, I am the biggest, I am the richest, I can do anything and everyone else must obey'... That is the law of the strongest, and I do not agree with that kind of law."Despite the criticism, Lula said he will exhaust negotiations before any retaliation. "I do not intend to enter a tariff war with the US or with anyone, I want to negotiate," he said, recalling that he learned to bargain in his years as a union leader. He also noted that Brazil runs a trade deficit with the US, meaning it buys more from Americans than it sells to them, which is why he calls the tariffs unjust.How it worksThe American tariff package stacks two charges: a 25% levy anchored in Section 301 of US trade law, motivated by disputes over Pix (Brazil's instant payment system), digital platform regulation and ethanol, plus 12.5% over alleged failures to police forced labor. Brazil's Reciprocity Law, passed unanimously by Congress, lets the government slap surcharges on American goods in response to barriers it deems unfair. Brazil has formally activated the law and opened consultations at the WTO (World Trade Organization), though no practical retaliation has been applied so far.In practice, beef, coffee and wood pulp made the US exemption list, while ethanol and agricultural machinery are directly hit. Lula said the government must define which products of US interest would enter the Reciprocity Law. "If it is not possible because the US does not want it, we will have to take action," he said.Lula is in New York to deliver Brazil's opening speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday (22), and no bilateral meeting with Trump is confirmed. In a presidential election year, with the Workers' Party leader running for re-election, he also told CNN that Trump has said to interlocutors he will not interfere in the Brazilian vote, according to InfoMoney. He called the US military action in Venezuela, which captured Nicolás Maduro in January, "grave" and defended elections in the neighboring country.

100% of Braskem's freely traded shares can now be sold to the Shine I fund managed by IG4 Capital. The green light came on Monday (Sept. 21), when the CVM, Brazil's securities regulator, approved the registration of a tender offer for the petrochemical company. For anyone holding the shares through a broker, it means a choice once the offer is published: sell to the fund or stay on as a minority shareholder.The offer, detailed in a statement by Braskem itself, covers all common and preferred shares in circulation that were not part of the shareholders' agreement signed with Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company that co-runs the petrochemical producer. B3, the São Paulo stock exchange, has already authorized the auction of the shares on its trading platform. The auction date and the participation rules will only be announced with the offer prospectus, which is still pending.How it works: a tender offer, or OPA in the Portuguese acronym, works like an auction open to every shareholder of a company. Whoever makes the offer commits to buying shares from anyone who wants to sell, under the same rules for all. In Brazil, the CVM, the local equivalent of the U.S. SEC, must register the deal first, and the purchase happens in a single auction at the exchange.How shareholders will be paidSellers will be paid with debentures, debt securities issued by NSP Investimentos, a non-financial holding company controlled by Novonor, the former Odebrecht group, according to Valor Econômico. Braskem said the offer will reproduce, share by share, the same consideration the fund handed to Novonor when it took control. In June, that consideration added up to roughly 547 million debentures of the first series and 273 million of the second, more than 820 million securities in total, almost four for every inhabitant of Brazil.Those securities trace back to an old debt pile: IG4 took on about R$ 20 billion in obligations the former Odebrecht group had with large banks, Folha reports. That is the equivalent of nearly R$ 100 per Brazilian, counting all of the country's more than 200 million inhabitants. The same structure used in June will now be offered to the market.Who controls BraskemIn June, Shine I became the controlling shareholder with 50.11% of voting capital against 47.03% held by Petrobras, replacing Novonor as the state company's partner, a gap of just over 3 percentage points. In total capital, which includes preferred shares, the state company is still larger: 36.15% to the fund's 34.32%. The offer is not available to investors living in the United States and does not include the ADSs, Braskem's share receipts traded in New York.

40% higher: that is the delinquency rate among members of Sicredi who bet on bets, Brazil's online gambling sites, during 2025, compared with members who did not bet. In practical terms, the bettor's household budget runs short more often when the car installment, the electricity bill or the credit card comes due. The survey was released on Sunday (20) by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.Sicredi, one of Brazil's largest cooperative banking systems, runs more than 90 credit cooperatives with 10.5 million members in every state of the country, more people than the population of Portugal. The study covered 1.3 million members who bet last year, about as many people as live in the city of Porto Alegre. It checked individuals with active loans in July 2026 and whether they had bet online between January and December 2025.More betting, more missed paymentsThe study links delinquency to how often and how much people bet: more frequent wagers and larger amounts come with more missed payments. Among bettors themselves, frequent players are 40% more delinquent than occasional ones. "It was a [negative] surprise. Our findings on this project are extremely important", Sicredi CEO César Gioda Bochi told Folha.What it means: in Brazil, inadimplência (delinquency) means having an overdue payment, usually one more than 30 days late, such as a loan installment or a credit card bill. The debtor's name typically goes on credit bureau blacklists, the so-called "dirty name", which makes new loans more expensive or blocks them entirely. The Sicredi study shows a statistical correlation between betting and default, not proven causation.The figure is double the one in a study by Insper and the payments company Stone released in early September, which found that people with overdue payments are on average 20% more common among bettors; on credit cards, delays reach almost 40%. That study estimated about 25 million people bet on regulated platforms in 2025, more than the population of the state of Rio de Janeiro. "What the study confirms is that betting has had a harmful effect on indebtedness", StoneCo economist Rômullo Carvalho said in comments reported by CNN Brasil."What is left to pay loan installments gets smaller and leads to higher delinquency. So this is something relevant to the economic recovery process", Bochi said.According to Bochi, 50% of Brazilian families' annual income is already committed to debt, the equivalent of six months of work per year just to cover installments. Higher delinquency among bettors erodes repayment capacity and slows the economic recovery, he said. "It is not only the urban individual, but also in the rural producer context", Bochi said.Central Bank is watchingThe preliminary results were delivered to the board of the Central Bank, which is studying how online bets, regulated in Brazil since January 2025, affect household debt before adopting corrective measures. Its current focus is default in Pronaf, a federal program that offers cheap rural credit to small family farmers. The Central Bank declined to comment when contacted by Folha.About 20 days ago, at a banking industry event, Central Bank supervision director Aílton de Aquino called bets a "central element" in household indebtedness and labeled as "fake news" the view that betting firms do not contribute to debt. He also questioned betting ads inside financial apps. Bochi wants Brazil to follow international practice, with tighter limits on advertising and sponsorship.The Sicredi analysis is preliminary and has no breakdown by income bracket, region, activity or type of loan. Folha also reports that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has promised measures against the betting sites.

Brazil's benchmark interest rate, the Selic, fell to 13.75% a year on Wednesday (16), the fifth cut in a row by the Copom, the committee that sets the cost of money at the country's central bank. For household budgets the relief is still thin: loan installments remain expensive, and savings accounts now yield a little less. The bank's next step has become the most uncertain call of the year, with inflation close to the ceiling of the official target and the economy losing steam.The 0.25 percentage point cut, approved unanimously, was expected by financial markets. The Selic has left behind its peak of 15%, held from June 2025 to March this year, the highest level in almost 20 years. The committee is short-handed: the terms of directors Renato Gomes and Diego Guillen expired at the end of 2025, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has yet to send replacements to Congress.Inflation eased in August, but the target ceiling is closeThe official consumer price index, the IPCA, fell 0.32% in August, the largest monthly deflation in four years, helped by a one-off Itaipu bonus credited on electricity bills. On a R$ 500 grocery basket, that drop is worth about R$ 1.60 in the month. Food prices also fell 0.34%.Over 12 months the IPCA has slowed to 4.22%, below the 4.5% ceiling of Brazil's inflation target, but far above the 3% midpoint: a cart that cost R$ 500 a year ago costs about R$ 521 today. Markets are not relaxed about 2026: the Focus survey, a weekly central bank poll of analysts, projects year-end inflation of 4.9%, above the ceiling. Before the war in the Middle East the estimate was 3.95%, and the bank's own June report went as high as 5.2%.In short: the Selic is the central bank's main tool to hold down prices. High rates make credit expensive and cool consumption, which slows inflation; cuts do the opposite. The dilemma now is to calibrate further cuts to support a weak economy without reigniting inflation that already runs near the ceiling.Signs of weakness are piling up: GDP fell 0.4% in July and 1% in June by FGV's monthly monitor, and is up only 1.8% over 12 months, down from 2.2% through June. Household consumption grew 0.4% in the quarter through July, the slowest pace since October 2025. Analysts in the Focus survey cut their 2026 growth forecast to 1.89%, less than half the 4.9% inflation they expect this year."The set of indicators released since the last meeting shows a gradual moderation of economic activity, mainly in more cyclical sectors, although still at a resilient level, and a heated labor market. In the most recent releases, headline inflation and the average of underlying measures have decelerated, remaining below the upper limit of the tolerance band, yet still above the target."The next step runs through the October electionIn its statement, the committee said uncertainty around the war in the Middle East and around monetary policy in advanced economies "requires caution on the part of emerging countries". Even so, the bank has not signaled any intention to stop cutting, says Silvia Ludmer, chief economist at Andbank Brasil. She describes a "calibration cycle", the most conservative and gradual since at least 2003: "it is moving very slowly".The October presidential election has entered the risk math. If the result puts pressure on the currency, the bank may have to interrupt the cuts, Ludmer warns, and she also lists the PEC 6x1 (a constitutional amendment bill in Congress), the tax reform and El Niño as upside risks for 2027 inflation, whose forecast has already risen from 3.8% to 4.3% since March: "these numbers are drifting away from the center of the target", she said. While Brazil cuts rates, the US and European central banks are signaling hikes, which can weigh on the real. "Brazil is going somewhat against the flow", she summed up.

Brazil's judiciary spent R$ 164.6 billion in 2025, the largest figure since the CNJ (National Council of Justice) began tracking spending in 2009. For taxpayers, the bill lands in full: the courts' own revenue came to R$ 68.2 billion, enough to cover 41% of spending and down 8.9% from 2024. In other words, of every real spent, about 59 cents come from the public budget, according to the CNJ's Justice in Numbers report as covered by Folha de S.Paulo.Payroll drives the record. Personnel costs totaled R$ 148.5 billion, or 90.2% of all spending, and rose 9% over 2024, Folha reports. Practically speaking, of every R$ 10 the courts pay out, about R$ 9 go to salaries and benefits.In brief: the CNJ is the judiciary's own oversight body, and Justice in Numbers is its annual survey of budgets, staffing and productivity across all Brazilian courts. The 2025 figures were presented to the council in June. Because comparable data only start in 2009, every record cited here refers to that window.One of the most criticized line items is the so-called verbas indenizatórias, allowances paid on top of judges' salaries, such as travel per diems, plane tickets and housing aid. They consumed R$ 9.8 billion last year, nearly double what the courts invested in technology, according to Folha. In many cases these extras push paychecks past the constitutional ceiling, the maximum salary allowed in Brazilian public service.In March, the STF (Supremo Tribunal Federal), Brazil's top court, limited such payments above the ceiling. Even so, the ruling still allows extras of up to R$ 421,900 per year for each judge, according to an analysis by Poder360.The squeeze on state budgetsState budgets set a record of their own: courts took in R$ 95.9 billion in 2025, or 6.53% of all spending by Brazil's states, up from 4.66% in 2013, according to Poder360 using Treasury data. The increase works out to roughly R$ 28 billion, enough to build more than 1,400 emergency care clinics (UPAs) or up to 3,400 schools. Adjusted for inflation, the state-level bill grew 61.6% between 2021 and 2025.Record caseload, shaken trustThe CNJ report also shows the other side of the ledger. Courts received 40.9 million new cases in 2025, a series record, and closed more than they took in: for every 100 cases filed, about 110 were resolved. Average productivity, 2,366 cases closed per active judge, tops the average of 252 recorded in the European countries tracked by the Cepej, the Council of Europe's justice efficiency commission.Total spending equaled 1.3% of Brazil's GDP and 2.7% of everything the federal government, states, the Federal District and municipalities spent last year, the report shows. The figures arrive amid criticism over "supersalaries" and the involvement of senior judges in the Banco Master scandal, as Folha notes. A Datafolha poll cited by the paper found that 38% of Brazilians say they do not trust the judiciary, 43% trust it a little and 17% a lot.

Brazil's gross public debt is projected to reach 89.6% of GDP in 2029, according to revised estimates by the National Treasury reported by Folha de S.Paulo. In plain terms: of every 100 reais of wealth the country produces in a year, nearly 90 will be spoken for by government debts. For taxpayers, that tends to show up as more of the budget eaten by interest payments and less left for health care and education.The figures are in supplementary documents to the PLOA, Brazil's annual budget bill for 2027, which were sent to Congress on Friday (18). Under the new scenario, the debt ends 2026 at 83.7% of GDP and climbs to 89.7% in 2030. On a household scale, it is as if someone earning 5,000 reais a month, or 60,000 a year, owed 53,800 reais.Understanding the number: the DBGG, or general government gross debt, adds up everything the federal government, states, cities and the pension system owe, without netting out assets. It is measured as a share of GDP, the value of all goods and services produced in the country in one year. The higher the ratio, the more risk creditors see and the more expensive it becomes for the government to borrow.Why the debt is growingAccording to Folha, the economic team blames two factors: the settlement of expenses left pending under former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), such as precatórios, court-ordered debts the federal government must pay, and the level of the Selic, the policy interest rate set by the Central Bank. The Selic directly affects the return on half of the debt bonds issued by the Treasury. Higher rates make rolling over the debt more expensive each year.An inheritance for the next presidentBy the Treasury's math, the next presidential term will also see debt rising, only more slowly: 6 percentage points over four years, against the 12 points of Lula's term, which began with debt at 71.7% of GDP. There is one condition that would make it worse. If fiscal results land at the floor of the target, the loosest limit of the result range the government commits to deliver, debt passes 90% of GDP in 2029.The pace of federal spending and the use of Treasury resources to expand subsidized credit had already drawn criticism from economists and financial market analysts. Now, according to the newspaper, the debt trajectory has become a central topic of the economic debate in the election campaign. As of Sunday (20), the Treasury numbers had been detailed only by Folha.

The Brazilian government's subsidy on diesel now adds up to R$ 2.12 per liter. The board of Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, approved on Saturday, September 19, the company's entry into a new program worth R$ 1 per liter, which adds to the R$ 1.12 per liter already in force. In practice, the company gains more room to hold down the price of the fuel that powers trucks and buses, and with it the freight cost that ends up on supermarket shelves.The new benefit runs for 30 days and can be extended for another 30. It was created by Provisional Measure 1,391, issued on September 11 (a Provisional Measure is a temporary presidential decree with the force of law that Congress must approve later), and regulated by Finance Ministry rule 2,813, published on Wednesday, September 16, which set the value at R$ 1 per liter of road-use diesel A. In a filing to the market, Petrobras said the move "is compatible with the company's interest" and that signing the agreement still depends on the program's final rules.What the subsidy meansThe economic subsidy, or subvenção econômica, is a payment the Treasury makes to producers and importers when oil prices and the exchange rate rise. The idea is that the increase does not reach the pump in full: part of the cost leaves the federal budget and lands in Petrobras' cash. For scale, the R$ 2.12 per liter is about 30% of the average pump price of diesel, which ended the week at R$ 7.13 per liter, the highest since May, according to the ANP, the agency that surveys fuel prices in Brazil.Earlier in the week, Petrobras announced an average increase of R$ 1 per liter on diesel sold to distributors, along with a discount of the same size. The two moves canceled each other out, and the company's price stayed the same, according to news outlet G1. Petrobras said it keeps its commercial strategy, "avoiding the immediate pass-through to domestic prices of the volatility of international quotes and the exchange rate".Petrobras has already received R$ 9.9 billionAlso on Saturday, the company said it received R$ 448 million from the gasoline subsidy program (Provisional Measure 1,358), covering sales made from July 16 to 31. With that payment, the accumulated total under the diesel, gasoline and LPG programs, the bottled cooking gas used in millions of Brazilian homes, reached R$ 9.9 billion. The money comes from the federal budget, paid by the Treasury to the company.According to G1, with information from Reuters, the payments are part of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's effort to soften the effects of higher oil prices since the start of the war in Iran, weeks before the October presidential election. Diesel dominates cargo transport in Brazil, which is why the government has focused on it. Petrobras said it remains committed to "responsible, balanced and transparent" conduct.

A liter of S-10 diesel, the fuel that powers Brazil's trucks, buses and pickups, averaged R$ 7.13 at pumps across the country this week, up 2.3% from the week before. It is the highest price since the end of May, according to the weekly survey released on Friday (18) by ANP, Brazil's national oil, gas and biofuels agency. For drivers, that works out to about R$ 0.16 more per liter.Filling the 40-liter tank of a pickup now costs close to R$ 285. For a truck with a 300-liter tank, a fill-up runs to R$ 2,139, roughly R$ 48 more than last week. Because nearly all cargo in Brazil moves by road, diesel prices feed into freight costs and, in time, into store prices.Why the price roseThe increase comes as the federal diesel subsidy began to be phased out this week and as oil and refined products surged on international markets, g1 reported. The current benefit, R$ 1.12 per liter, runs until September 26. Diesel had been cheaper than gasoline between August 2 and September 12, a position it has now lost.How it works: the subsidy, officially called a "subvenção econômica" (economic subvention), is money the government pays to fuel producers and importers to hold down pump prices; drivers never see the cash, it reaches the producer before the fuel gets to the station. On top of the benefit ending September 26, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a provisional measure, a temporary law that takes effect immediately, authorizing an extra R$ 1 per liter for 30 days. With both in force, the aid totals R$ 2.12 per liter, nearly 30% of the current pump price.The government's cushionPetrobras, the state-controlled oil company, said it raised the price of diesel sold to distributors by R$ 1 per liter, but that a new federal subsidy of the same size offsets the increase, leaving its selling price unchanged. The government also published a provisional measure in the Official Gazette releasing R$ 6.6 billion for fuel production and import subsidies, R$ 5.6 billion of it for diesel. The money comes through an extraordinary credit, which sits outside the spending limits of Brazil's fiscal framework, the rule that caps public spending.According to g1, the government describes the benefit as a form of "cashback" to offset the return of federal taxes on diesel, and blames the price pressure on the war between the United States and Israel against Iran, along with the Russia-Ukraine conflict. With the R$ 1.12 subsidy expiring on September 26 and the new one lasting only 30 days, what happens next at the pump depends largely on the price of oil.

Brazil's benchmark stock index, the Ibovespa, closed up 0.24% at 185,992 points on Thursday after a shaky morning: from its intraday high to its low, the index lost about 3,600 points as investors reacted to a 15% increase in Bolsa Familia, the country's main cash-transfer program. The swing amounted to nearly 2% of the index's value within hours, roughly a 20-real move for anyone holding 1,000 reais in a fund that tracks it. The morning drop reflected the question that weighs most on household finances: how far government spending will go, since it pressures interest rates and inflation.According to InfoMoney, the raise was announced shortly after 10:30 a.m. in Brasilia, and by about 10:45 the index had touched a low of 183,242 points, down 1.24%. Investors demanded higher risk premiums to hold Brazilian assets, and the Treasury's retail investment platform, Tesouro Direto, briefly went offline amid the volatility, the outlet reported. The recovery came in the afternoon, led by mining company Vale, which rose about 2% in line with foreign miners.The dollar followed a similar path: it rose as much as 0.5%, to 5.17 reais, right after the announcement, but ended down 0.24%, at 5.13 reais, according to news outlet Brasil61. The four-centavo gap between the peak and the close equals 40 reais for every 1,000 US dollars bought, a difference that shows up in travel and imported goods. Relief came from abroad, with oil prices and US Treasury yields falling, Money Times reported.Fiscal costs back in focusExplained: a risk premium is the extra return investors demand to keep money in a country they see as uncertain. When doubts about the budget grow, the premium rises, and stocks and bonds fall until returns look attractive again. That mechanism drove the morning selloff, according to InfoMoney.Brazil's Planning Ministry puts the cost of the raise at 5.8 billion reais in 2026 and about 22.7 billion reais a year in 2027 and 2028. From next year on, the annual bill nearly quadruples. Finance Minister Dario Durigan said the increase "fits within the budget".Bruno Perri, chief economist at Forum Investimentos, said investors weighed that the benefit may have limited electoral effect, noting that the large increase paid in 2022 under the so-called "PEC Kamikaze" did not change that year's election outcome. "Measures like this in an election period are not new in Brazil. They only point to a deepening or continuation of an expansionist fiscal policy," said João Ferreira, a partner at brokerage One.The session also digested what traders called "Super Wednesday": the US Federal Reserve raised rates by a quarter point, while Brazil's rate-setting committee, the Copom, cut the Selic policy rate from 14% to 13.75%, a move seen as expected and already priced in by analyst João Daronco of Suno Research. The Bolsa Familia floor rises from 600 to 691 reais starting in October, an extra 91 reais a month, about 3 reais a day for the poorest families. Markets remain focused on election polls, with a Datafolha survey due at 7:15 p.m. on Thursday.

R$ 22.7 billion a year. That is the extra cost the new Bolsa Família increase imposes on Brazil's public finances from 2027 onward, and the number worrying economists consulted on Thursday (17). For the 19.3 million families covered by the flagship cash-transfer program, the effect is immediate: the minimum payment rises from R$ 600 to R$ 691 in October, an extra R$ 91 a month, about R$ 3 a day, roughly $134 at current exchange rates. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced the raise 17 days before the first round of the presidential election on October 4.None of the experts interviewed by news site g1 disputes the size of the increase, about 15%: inflation has totaled 17% since the program was relaunched in March 2023, so today's R$ 600 buys less than it did back then. Their target is the calendar. "The problem is that this is being done on the eve of the elections, so it is hard not to read the move as electioneering," said André Galhardo, chief economist at Análise Econômica.The government rejects the electoral reading. "I believe it does not [have anything to do with the elections]. It was clear this came from the registration effort," said Planning Minister Bruno Moretti. Skepticism runs deeper in the market: José Márcio Camargo, chief economist at Genial Investimentos, told Folha he doubts Finance Minister Dario Durigan's assurance that the measure will not affect the budget.The cost for public financesThis year the bill is smaller, R$ 5.8 billion, because the new value only runs from October to December. From 2027 on, the annual extra spending is R$ 22.7 billion, nearly four times this year's cost, and total program spending climbs from R$ 157.1 billion to R$ 179 billion in the 2027 budget, up 13.9%, according to the Planning Ministry. "In a scenario where we already have a significant fiscal problem, this raise ends up contributing to the problem," said Juliana Inhasz, a professor at the Insper school of economics in São Paulo.In plain terms: "fiscal risk" is investors' fear that the government will spend more than it collects and borrow to cover the gap. When that fear grows, investors charge higher rates to lend to the country, public debt gets more expensive and credit for families and companies tends to get pricier, slowing consumption and investment. Inhasz also warns that more money in poor households' pockets could push inflation up, against the grain of the central bank, which this week cut its benchmark rate to 13.75% a year.Economists disagree on how serious the damage is. Consultancy Warren backs the raise: "This is not a new benefit, it is offsetting a nominal loss. The rest is fantasy or ignorance," chief economist Felipe Salto told Folha. Yet Warren's own report says meeting the 2027 target of a primary surplus of at least R$ 36.6 billion, the budget balance before interest payments, will be "quite challenging" with the raise's R$ 23.2 billion annual impact, nearly two-thirds of the target.The 2022 precedentThe program had not been adjusted since 2022, when it was still called Auxílio Brasil and the script looked similar. Two months before that year's first round, Congress passed Constitutional Amendment 123, the "Kamikaze amendment", which freed spending outside the cap and let Jair Bolsonaro's government raise the floor from R$ 400 to R$ 600. In one month, the average payment jumped from R$ 408 to R$ 607, an increase of almost 50%, and enrollment grew from 18.1 million to 20.2 million families, according to the social development ministry.Back then it was Lula's own campaign that took the raise to the electoral court, seeking Bolsonaro's disqualification on the grounds that he "granted illegal financial benefits to Brazilian citizens" during the campaign, as Folha reported. "This shows a deterioration of Brazilian institutions, with decisions that should be technical and automatic becoming electoral calendar tools," said José Luis Oreiro, an economics professor at the University of Brasília. For Daniel Duque, a researcher at the FGV institute Ibre, the benefit has nearly tripled since 2021, and recipients are not worse off today than they were then.Financial markets took the news calmly: the real strengthened 0.24% to R$ 5.1386 per dollar and the São Paulo stock index rose 0.24%, as investors weighed the fiscal impact alongside the central bank's rate cut. The new floor starts being paid on October 19, less than a week before a possible runoff on October 25. Allies of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula's main rival in the polls, have already said they will challenge the raise before the electoral court.

Brazil's benchmark interest rate stands at 14% a year, and it shapes what families pay to finance a fridge, roll over credit card debt or take a car loan. As a yardstick: at 14% a year, reference interest alone eats R$ 140 out of every R$ 1,000 owed over twelve months. On Wednesday (16), the central bank committee known as Copom announces its next decision on the rate, and on the eve of it, news outlet g1 compiled what presidential candidates propose to cut rates, household debt and government spending.The numbers explain why the issue has become campaign material. The Selic, as the rate is known, ended 2025 at 15% a year, its highest level in two decades, and sits one point below that today. Household indebtedness hit a record in July, with eight in ten Brazilian households carrying some kind of debt, according to a survey by CNC, the national commerce confederation, the equivalent of eight homes in debt on every street of ten.In a Quaest poll cited by BBC News Brasil, the economy ranks as the country's second biggest problem, named by 16% of voters, nearly one in six, behind only violence at 31%. The poll heard 2,004 people between August 30 and September 1. Twelve tickets are running for the presidency in October's election.In brief: the Selic is Brazil's basic interest rate, set by Copom, the committee of central bank directors that meets to raise, cut or hold it, much as the Federal Reserve does with US rates. High rates make credit costlier and cool consumption, which helps contain inflation but makes debts harder to pay. The "fiscal framework", in Portuguese "arcabouço", is the rule that caps the growth of public spending: when markets doubt government accounts, they push rates up.From Desenrola to the "big scissors"President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party (PT), running for reelection, acknowledges in his government plan that a high Selic "disorganizes the economy and concentrates income". To bring it down, he pledges to control inflation, keep the fiscal framework rule and extend Desenrola Brasil, a program that renegotiates the debts of families and small businesses. The plan also promises wider credit access for small and midsize firms and regulation of online betting to protect household income.In an interview with Globo in late August, Lula said public debt "does not worry" him and bet on growth to shrink it relative to GDP, the value of everything the country produces in a year:"As you start to grow the economy, debt starts to fall in relation to GDP. Eighty percent of debt, in a country, is not much. Look at the United States, Japan, Italy. Do you know what the US debt is? 120% of GDP"Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, bets on a "big scissors", his word for sweeping spending cuts, to lower the Selic, and wants to replace the fiscal framework rule. He also proposes revising the tax reform to cut taxes and exempt exports and investments. On household debt, he defends regulating online betting, banning social program funds from betting platforms and creating an income-contingent loan for university students."Just with my election and my team, the interest rate will already fall at the next Copom meeting", he told Globo, promising savings by cutting corruption and bureaucracy. g1 notes that the Selic is set by the central bank, though a president can take steps that weigh on the decision and on the economy's course.Writer Augusto Cury (Avante) promises an "Banco do Empreendedor", an entrepreneurs' bank charging 5% to 6% a year on loans of up to R$ 20,000, less than half the current Selic. He also proposes reviewing banks' risk models to contain the rate and taxing online betting at 40%. "If we brought in artificial intelligence and digitalized the entire public machine, we would certainly save enough", he said in an interview with Globo.Regulating online betting is where the plans overlap: Lula wants to regulate the sector to protect income, Flávio wants to bar social program money from the platforms and Cury wants to tax them at 40%. On public accounts the paths split, with Lula keeping the current framework, the PL candidate seeking to change the rule and Cury banking on digitalization. Wednesday's decision belongs to the central bank; voters deliver theirs in October.

One week. That is the deadline the mines and energy minister, Alexandre Silveira, set on Wednesday (16) for Brazil to see the first "concrete results" of its new critical minerals law, according to news site g1. In practice, the government has promised to unveil company investments in refining and processing inside the country, stages of the supply chain that are currently done mostly abroad and that hold the better qualified jobs.The announcement came at the ceremony where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the National Policy for Critical and Strategic Minerals into law. Congress had finished the text in early September: the Senate passed the bill on September 2 in a symbolic vote, with support from the opposition, according to state news agency Agência Brasil. The law authorizes a guarantee fund (collateral that helps companies borrow) with a federal contribution capped at 2 billion reais, plus a tax credit (a discount on taxes owed) of up to 5 billion reais, paid in yearly installments of 1 billion reais between 2030 and 2034.To size the numbers: the annual cap on the tax break equals roughly 5 reais per Brazilian per year. The budget to map the country's geology, now 8 million reais at the National Mining Agency, will rise to 300 million reais next year, nearly a 38-fold increase, according to Silveira. That mapping shows where economically viable ore sits, information that is still missing for much of Brazilian territory.Understand: what critical minerals areRare earths are a group of 17 chemical elements used in the permanent magnets of electric motors, smartphones and wind turbines. They are part of the broader group of critical minerals, which includes lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and copper, raw materials for batteries, solar panels and defense equipment. Despite the name, they are not exactly rare: they are spread across the world, but in low concentrations, which makes extraction expensive.Brazil holds the world's second largest rare earths reserve, about 21 million tonnes, behind only China, according to the United States Geological Survey. The global race for the sector heated up last month, when the American company USA Rare Earth moved forward with a purchase of Serra Verde, the only rare earths miner operating in Brazil. At the signing ceremony, Lula said that "the wealth of Brazil has a single owner: the Brazilian people".There is skepticism. The association of mining municipalities, AMIG Brasil, fears the investments will flow to other regions, leaving only the impacts of mining behind. Bruno Milanez, a professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, told Agência Brasil that the incentives are insufficient to industrialize rare earths in the country.

Brazil's benchmark stock index, the Ibovespa, fell 0.51% on Wednesday (16), with Petrobras shares among the biggest drags on the index, according to InfoMoney. In practical terms, a 1,000-real portfolio tracking the index lost about 5 reais on the day. The decline followed the global market reaction to the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, raising interest rates and signaling more tightening ahead.The commercial dollar closed nearly flat at R$ 5.15, InfoMoney reported. For consumers, every US$ 100, the pre-tax price of an imported pair of sneakers, costs about 515 reais. The US currency gained ground against most currencies after the Fed decision, but the Brazilian real held steady as traders waited on the country's own central bank.Why the market fellIn New York, the Dow Jones fell 1.21%, the S&P 500 lost 0.44% and the Nasdaq was virtually unchanged. Energy was the worst performing sector after Brent crude dropped 2.69% to US$ 105.83 a barrel on reports that Saudi Arabia would offer extra oil cargoes. Even so, oil is up more than 20% in about two and a half weeks because of the war in the Middle East, a rise that already weighs on pump prices.How it works: the Fed sets the benchmark interest rate for the United States, the reference for credit in the world's largest economy. When the Fed raises rates, US government bonds pay more and attract foreign money, which strengthens the dollar against currencies such as the real, as G1 explains. Higher US rates also pressure Brazil to keep its own policy rate, the Selic, elevated to avoid losing investors.Fed hikes, Brazil's Copom cutsThe Fed raised its rate by 0.25 percentage points to a range of 3.75% to 4% a year, the first increase since July 2023, in a unanimous vote. Most committee members project at least one more 0.25 point hike this year, according to G1, while US consumer inflation ended August at 3.4% over 12 months, well above the bank's 2% target. "The fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long," Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said at a press conference.In Brazil, the session ended with the market waiting on the Copom, the central bank committee that sets the Selic, the benchmark rate that shapes the cost of car loans and credit card debt. Traders bet on a cut from 14% to 13.75% a year, and the committee confirmed that move after the closing bell: it was the fifth straight reduction, G1 reported. Credit remains expensive: on a 10,000-real debt, the old 14% rate meant roughly 1,400 reais in interest per year, and Brazil's real interest rate, at 8.45%, is still the world's highest, according to a MoneYou survey.

R$ 30 billion. That is the credit volume President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured on Monday (Sept 14) by signing into law the bill that makes Move Brasil, the federal program that subsidizes car loans for gig drivers, permanent, with no expiry date. For a ride app driver, it means the subsidized line to buy a new car stays open for as long as funds last at BNDES, Brazil's development bank.The ceremony took place at the Planalto presidential palace, with Lula receiving drivers, 20 days before the first round of the presidential election on October 4. It happened on the same day a Quaest poll put Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), Lula's rival, numerically ahead in a runoff scenario, as Poder360 reported. The law is the final step of a provisional decree issued in June, amended by the lower house in late August and approved by the Senate the next day; the decree would have expired on September 15, one day after the signing.The rules got lighter: the minimum time registered on a ride app drops from 12 months to 6, and the driver must have completed at least 100 rides on the same platform in that period. Payment terms now run up to 84 months, seven years, up from 72. The vehicle price cap stays at R$ 200,000, a ceiling already raised from R$ 150,000 in August after uptake fell short of expectations.Interest is 12.6% a year for men and 11.5% for women, for cars and motorcycles, bank fees included, according to G1. Each worker can finance one vehicle, and the law extends the credit to taxi drivers, school van drivers, cargo utilities and accessibility adaptations for people with disabilities. According to the government, the August adjustments had already widened the program's potential reach from 63% to 88% of the vehicle market, nearly nine in ten models on sale.How the balloon payment worksContracts use a variable amortization system, known in Brazil as prestação balão (balloon payment): installments start smaller and grow over the years as the worker's income and productivity rise. The idea is to spare the household budget early on, when the new car has just left the dealership. Those who earn more by the end of the contract pay larger installments.What it costs the TreasuryDevelopment, Industry and Trade Minister Márcio Elias Rosa said R$ 25 billion remain available to keep the program running, according to demand. BNDES coordinates the program, while Caixa and Banco do Brasil handle the loans, backed by a public fund, the FGO (Fundo Garantidor de Operações, an operations guarantee fund), which covers 80% of each loan. According to R7, Move Brasil has financed 48,000 vehicles so far; the remaining R$ 25 billion could fund up to 125,000 cars at the R$ 200,000 cap, more than double what has been delivered.The R$ 30 billion cited by the government is the volume of credit BNDES can lend over time. In the line for app and taxi drivers, the money comes from the National Treasury, which pays the gap between market rates and the program's rate. According to Poder360, the government has yet to release a projection of the measure's total cost on a permanent basis.

More than 1,000 rules have already been mapped for repeal by the economic team of Flavio Bolsonaro, the senator and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro who is the main challenger to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil's October election. The pledge came on Monday (14) from Daniella Marques, the campaign's economic coordinator and former head of state-owned bank Caixa Economica Federal under Jair Bolsonaro, at an event in Sao Paulo. For voters, it amounts to a promise to roll back taxes created or raised while Fernando Haddad ran the Finance Ministry in the Lula government.Speaking at a seminar hosted by the Esfera group at Casa Fasano, she said the instruction came from the candidate himself. Measures cited to Folha de S.Paulo include taking the IOF, a federal tax on bank transfers and investments, back to its 2022 rate, and scrapping the tax on oil exports. According to O Globo, the targets also include accessory obligations, the paperwork companies must file with tax authorities, and other red tape."Flavio gave the team guidance to work on revoking and walking back every tax created or raised by Haddad. We already have more than a thousand rules mapped for repeal, drawing some inspiration from what Milei's government did in Argentina," she said.What the rules areMost of the rules in the crosshairs are infra-legal: ordinances and resolutions issued by ministries and agencies, which never pass through Congress and can be undone by decree. Accessory obligations, the forms and reports companies owe the tax office, are also on the list. To grasp the scale, repealing a thousand rules works out to roughly one per working day across a four-year term.The Milei exampleThe declared model is Argentina's Javier Milei, in office since December 2023. "Milei is a great example in terms of recovering investment capacity and reducing bureaucracy and taxes," she added. As Folha reports, poverty in Argentina fell from 42% to 32%, meaning about 10 in every 100 Argentines left poverty, but the economy stagnated, unemployment rose and local industry is struggling against foreign competition.The announced route to lower interest rates runs through fiscal tightening. "Whoever does not take care of the accounts does not take care of the people. We will focus on putting the accounts in the black so that interest rates can fall in Brazil," she said, defending the central bank's independence. Cuts, she said, would come from tax privileges and a leaner state, with no changes to social programs.She also criticized Lula's handling of public finances, saying he "has been very irresponsible, especially with the poorest, by denying that there is a problem that is mathematical". And she acknowledged that Congress will have the final word: "The technicians will take a menu for discussion with Congress. Congress is sovereign in this decision." The pledge comes as the race tightens: a Quaest poll released on Monday, reported by G1, put Flavio numerically ahead of Lula in a runoff simulation for the first time, 42% to 40%.

Online betting platforms, known in Brazil as bets, drained between R$ 120 billion and R$ 141 billion from the Brazilian economy in 2025, or 0.9% to 1.1% of GDP, according to a study by the Center for Research on the Macroeconomics of Inequalities (Made) at the University of São Paulo's economics school (FEA/USP), released on Tuesday (Sept. 15). For households, that means money left family budgets and stopped circulating in shops, markets and services. The net transfer from households to the platforms alone reached R$ 62.5 billion, roughly R$ 300 per resident if split across the whole population.To size the damage, the researchers compare the loss with the country's own performance in the same year. The estimate equals 40% to 50% of everything the economy grew in 2025 and is about five times larger than projections for the impact of US tariffs on Brazilian GDP. The calculations also account for the direct and indirect jobs created by the industry, and the picture barely changes."To gauge this magnitude, the estimated loss corresponds to something between 40% and 50% of all the economy's growth in 2025 and is about five times larger than estimates of the impact of American tariffs on Brazilian GDP," the study concludes.In plain terms: GDP, or gross domestic product, is the sum of all goods and services a country produces in a year, the standard yardstick for the size of an economy. When up to R$ 141 billion is pulled out of that circulation, the effect shows up as weaker sales, fewer hires and lower tax revenue.Impact on public accountsThe slump in activity would cut tax revenue by R$ 31.1 billion to R$ 54.8 billion, the researchers calculate. Even after discounting the roughly R$ 9 billion collected directly from betting platforms, the net effect on public accounts would be negative by at least R$ 22 billion and could reach R$ 46 billion. By the study's measure, that hole equals 10% to 20% of the entire public health budget of São Paulo in 2025.The study also weighs the effect on household debt. If the R$ 62.5 billion sent to betting companies had been financed entirely by new loans, a scenario the authors themselves call extreme, betting would account for about 14% of the rise in household indebtedness in 2025, a year in which consumer credit balances grew by about R$ 450 billion. There is also a risk of income concentration: the richest 1%, who already take in about 24% of the country's income, could see that share rise by 0.5% to 2.1%, depending on who pockets the profits."Even in the most conservative case, it is a significant effect in a country where income concentration is already extremely high," the researchers write.Betting on the campaign trailThe study lands in the final stretch of Brazil's presidential race, with gambling at the center of the debate. A column by Carlos Juliano Barros at UOL that amplified the research says betting has become a target in the election. Newspaper Estadão reported in late August that campaigns are courting voters with pledges to crack down on bets, a message aimed at protecting household budgets.For the Made researchers, the effects go beyond the individual losses of gamblers. By pulling income mainly from poorer households, betting shrinks demand, drags down GDP, cuts tax collection and deepens inequality, the study concludes.

It is R$ 30 billion in subsidized credit to finance cars and motorcycles, about one hundred times the R$ 300 million jackpot of Brazil's Lotofácil da Independência lottery draw this week. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party signed the law on Monday (14) extending the Move Brasil Taxi and Apps program, which serves taxi drivers, ride-hailing drivers and delivery workers. School van drivers join for the first time, though the rules for that group still depend on the National Monetary Council, the body that sets credit rules in Brazil.The program was created in May by provisional measure, a temporary decree the president can issue and Congress must approve, and it would have expired on Tuesday (15) without the signature, according to Folha de S.Paulo (G1 records a continuation measure issued in June). The lower house passed the bill in late August with changes and the Senate approved it the next day. With the sanction, the credit stays available until funds run out, and General Secretary Guilherme Boulos called the program a permanent public policy.What the law changesAccording to G1, the law allows financing of cars priced up to R$ 200,000 running on ethanol, flex-fuel, electric or hybrid engines, in up to 84 monthly installments, which means seven years of payments; Folha reports the law also covers used vehicles. Interest rates are 12.6% a year for men and 11.5% for women. To qualify, ride-hailing drivers need six months of active registration on a platform and at least 100 rides in that period, fewer than four rides a week on average, down from a previous registration requirement of 12 months.In plain terms: the credit is subsidized because the government takes on part of the risk. The law lets the Fundo de Garantia de Operações, a public guarantee fund, cover up to 100% of each loan in case of default, which lets the BNDES, Banco do Brasil and Caixa offer cheaper rates to workers without fixed, documented income. For those who live behind the wheel, the benefit shows up in the monthly payment.The ceremony and what comes nextAt the ceremony, Boulos said drivers "are paying less on the installment than they used to pay to rent the vehicles". Lula said that in the delivery business, "deep down, the ones who earn the least are the ones who work", and that the policy helps Brazil "stop being a developing country and become a developed one". Delivery worker Evelin Samanta de Souza Cornia, known as Likinha and linked to the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Direitos, thanked the government but pressed for a minimum fee of R$ 10 per delivery, an old demand of the category that has not been implemented.Definitions are still pending: the Finance and Trade ministries will set the eligibility criteria for vehicles, and the National Monetary Council will detail the terms for school vans. The law also provides for balloon payment schedules (smaller installments during the contract and a larger final payment), financing of adaptations for drivers with disabilities and a cap of one vehicle per driver. Car insurance can be folded into the loan.

Brazil's central bank is expected to cut its benchmark rate, the Selic, from 14% to 13.75% a year on Wednesday (Sept. 16), the fifth cut of the current easing cycle, according to O Globo. For consumers, the relief arrives slowly but in the right direction: cheaper installments on car and home loans, and lower yields on investments pegged to the rate. A central bank survey cited by Agencia Brasil shows the same market projection.On the same day, the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, is expected to move the other way and raise its policy rate by a quarter point, from a range of 3.5% to 3.75%. US rates would end up at less than a third of Brazil's. The rare doubleheader earned the date the nickname "Super Wednesday", combining the decision of Brazil's Copom rate-setting committee with that of its US equivalent, the FOMC.The reason for the Brazilian cut sits in household bills. The IPCA, the country's official inflation index, fell 0.32% in August, its best reading for the month since 2022, driven by cheaper residential electricity. On a R$ 500 grocery run, that drop means paying about R$ 1.60 less than in July.The figure beat the forecast of economists polled by Reuters, who expected a 0.29% decline, and reinforced bets on a cut, CNN Brasil reported. Inflation is up 3.11% so far this year and 4.22% over 12 months. "The result opens room for a 0.25 percentage point cut," Julio Barros, an economist at Banco Daycoval, told CNN.Context: the Selic is Brazil's benchmark interest rate, set by the Copom, the committee of central bank directors. It works as the price of money: higher, it makes credit expensive and cools inflation; lower, it cheapens loan installments and boosts the economy. A 0.25 point cut equals 25 basis points, the smallest step the committee usually takes.Markets are already pricing in further cuts: a futures contract betting on Brazil's rate in January 2028 trades at 13.555%, below the current Selic, with another cut seen as possible in November, according to CNN Brasil. Marcela Kawauti, chief economist at Lifetime Investimentos, says the central bank "should keep a conservative stance with a slow pace of cuts", because inflation expectations remain far from target and fiscal pressures push on prices.The Fed looks the other wayAmerica's problem is the mirror image of Brazil's: inflation running too hot. The CPI, the US equivalent of the IPCA, rose 0.4% in August, and the core index, which strips out food and energy, advanced 0.3%; producer prices are up 5.4% over 12 months, more than double the Fed's 2% target.After those figures, released on Friday (11), bets on a hike jumped from 70% to 90%, nine out of ten traders, according to Vinicius Flores, a partner at Stratton Capital. "American inflation has not yet entered a sufficiently comfortable path for the Fed," said Sidney Lima of Ouro Preto Investimentos. The PCE, the Fed's preferred index, comes out only after the meeting, leaving the CPI and producer prices as the references for the decision.Flores still sees a chance the Fed holds steady, citing methodological revisions to the PCE and the political cost of raising rates before the midterm elections. The week also brings the central bank's weekly Focus survey of market expectations and Chinese economic data, according to UOL. Both decisions land on Wednesday (Sept. 16).

R$ 691. That is the new minimum payment of the Bolsa Familia, Brazil's largest cash-transfer program, after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced a 15.04% increase on Thursday (17) at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia. For a household on the minimum, it means 91 reais more per month.The average payment rises from 675 to 777 reais, a gain of 102 reais. About 19.3 million households were paid in August, according to government figures. The government has not yet said when the new values start being paid.Understand: the 15.04% comes from the INPC, Brazil's consumer price index for low-income households and the reference used to adjust the program. Planning Minister Bruno Moretti said the index accumulated exactly that much from the program's relaunch in March 2023 through August. In practice, the new 691 reais buy what 600 reais bought in 2023.Who qualifies and what else changesFamilies qualify with monthly income of up to 218 reais per person, an updated registration in the Cadastro Unico database, and school and health commitments. Extra payments stack on top of the floor, as listed below. The government has not detailed how these add-ons will be adjusted.R$ 150 per child up to 6 years oldR$ 50 per pregnant womanR$ 50 per youth from 7 to 17 years oldR$ 50 per baby up to 6 months oldThe cost and the election clockThe raise was enacted by presidential decree and needs no vote in Congress, InfoMoney reported. Moretti put the cost at 5.8 billion reais for the rest of 2026 and around 22 billion reais in 2027, the first full year, nearly four times this year's bill. In the 2027 budget bill, which was sent to Congress without the increase, the program's allocation goes from 157.1 billion to about 179 billion reais, according to g1.Finance Minister Dario Durigan said the government's fiscal targets stay unchanged:"We are doing this in a very responsible way, very different from what the country has seen at other times... There is no jolt, there is no change of course."The announcement came less than 20 days before the first round of the presidential election on October 4, in which Lula is running for reelection. The 600-real floor had been in place since 2022, when it was set by then president Jair Bolsonaro, also on the eve of an election, as Folha de S.Paulo noted. It is the first adjustment since the program's relaunch in 2023; the law allows corrections at intervals of up to two years but does not make them mandatory, g1 reported.

Brazil's benchmark interest rate, the Selic, fell from 14% to 13.75% a year on Wednesday night (Sept. 16). The quarter-point cut, approved unanimously by the Copom, the rate-setting committee of the Central Bank, was the fifth in a row since the easing cycle resumed in April, and was expected by the market. For household budgets, the relief arrives slowly: installments on car and home loans and credit card interest tend to fall bit by bit.A year ago the Selic stood at 15%, where it remained from June 2025 to March 2026, its highest level in nearly two decades, according to the state news agency Agência Brasil. Credit stays expensive all the same: the CNI, Brazil's largest industry confederation, puts the real interest rate, what is left after discounting inflation, at around 9% a year, some 4 points above the 5% neutral rate estimated by the Central Bank itself, the level that neither speeds up nor cools the economy. In the assessment of the construction industry chamber CBIC, Brazilian rates remain among the highest in the world.Inflation helps; the world does not. Prices measured by the IPCA, Brazil's official consumer price index, fell 0.32% in August, the lowest reading in four years, helped by an Itaipu dam credit on electricity bills and by a 0.34% drop in food costs, the equivalent of 99.66 reais on a 100-real grocery bill. Twelve-month inflation slowed to 4.22%, from 4.44% in July, but the war in the Middle East and the onset of El Niño, a climate pattern that tends to push up food prices, keep the bank cautious."The external environment remains uncertain due to the lack of resolution of the armed conflicts in the Middle East and the uncertainty about monetary policy in some advanced economies. This scenario requires caution on the part of emerging countries in an environment marked by rising volatility in asset and commodity prices," the Copom said in its statement, as quoted by Agência Brasil.How it works: the Selic is the basic interest rate of the Brazilian economy, used in government bond trading and a reference for everything else, from overdrafts to mortgages. The Copom, a committee of Central Bank directors, sets it at periodic meetings: raising the rate makes credit more expensive and cools consumption, which helps bring inflation down, while cutting does the opposite. The inflation target is 3%, with a tolerance band between 1.5% and 4.5%, and since January 2025 it has been checked month by month against 12-month accumulated inflation, under the continuous-target system.What comes nextThe statement changed little from the previous one, and Valor Econômico sums up the message: the bank left the door open to further cuts without committing itself, and analysts are split between a pause and one more reduction at the November meeting. Projected inflation still sits above the ceiling of the target: the Focus survey, a weekly poll of financial institutions run by the Central Bank, sees 4.9% for 2026, against 5.2% projected by the bank itself, a figure to be revised at the end of the month. After the decision, the currency fell 0.06%, to R$ 5.1512, and the Brazilian stock exchange dropped 0.51%, to 185,548 points, according to G1.The committee voted with two seats empty: the terms of directors Renato Gomes and Diego Guillen expired at the end of 2025, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has yet to send replacements to Congress. Industry groups and unions called the cut too small. "It is essential that the Central Bank continue the cycle of Selic reductions," said Ricardo Alban, president of the CNI; the CUT union federation called the move "an important but insufficient step", and Força Sindical dismissed it as "a bucket of cold water" for the final quarter of the year.

Nearly 19 million people, roughly one in ten Brazilians, have already gotten some debt relief under the two editions of Desenrola Brasil, the federal renegotiation program that has since ended. The Finance Ministry is now preparing a new model, this time to buy back old debts that creditors have all but given up on collecting, according to InfoMoney on Thursday (17), based on an interview Finance Minister Dario Durigan gave to the newspaper EXTRA. The proposal will go to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva "in the coming days".The difference from Desenrola is that borrowers would not have to accept yet another renegotiation. The idea is to run an auction and buy, at a steep discount, debts contracted mostly between 2020 and 2022, the covid pandemic years. Durigan said the targets are obligations that "the banks themselves, the companies themselves have already lost hope of collecting", which keep millions of Brazilians listed as defaulters, a status that blocks access to new loans.In plain terms: a discount of this kind, called desagio in Brazil, is what makes a debt trade hands for far less than its face value, like a 1,000-real credit card bill from the pandemic era changing owners for a fraction of that. The older and less likely a debt is to be collected, the cheaper it becomes on the market. The ministry wants to use that mechanism to clear defaulters' records without a heavy bill for public finances.Durigan compared the initiatives to vaccines against a "chronic" debt problem inherited from the pandemic, and said vaccinating that problem "has to keep happening". He also confirmed the political timing: "We are presenting (the proposal) for the president to take to the campaign", he said, in a presidential election year with the vote scheduled for October."The next vaccines will be broader vaccines and will work along the lines of buying back the oldest debts people have. That is what we are taking to president Lula: a new program in which we can, with a large discount, buy back people's debt without them having to go through new renegotiations."What is still undefinedWho would buy these debts and what discount would apply remain open questions, and the model is still being drafted, according to the minister. Officials are also studying whether to include non-bank debts, such as electricity and gas bills. O Globo and Brasil 247 also reported the plan, and Durigan cited the case of drivers who are shut out of Move Brasil, the federal program that finances vehicles at lower rates, because of old defaults.The study lands one day after Brazil's central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by 0.25 point, to 13.75% a year. At that rate, every 1,000 reais financed costs about 137.50 reais a year in interest alone, before fees and taxes. For the economic team, still-high rates combined with old debts explain why so many people remain blacklisted even after two renegotiation programs.

Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, will raise the price of diesel A it sells to distributors by R$1 per liter starting on Thursday. Drivers should see no change at the pump: a federal subsidy approved by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva offsets the increase by the same amount, according to the company itself.The subsidy runs for 30 days and keeps the company's selling prices to distributors unchanged, G1 reported. Had the increase reached gas stations, filling the 80-liter tank of a pickup truck would cost R$80 more. The rise is more than double the R$0.44-per-liter change involved in the end of a gasoline discount last week.Why the increase came nowThe move was expected by the market, which had been warning of diesel shortages, according to newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. The resumption of the war in Iran pushed oil back above US$100 a barrel, and Petrobras had been selling diesel at less than half the import parity price, the benchmark that simulates the cost of bringing the fuel in from abroad. In recent days, farmers in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul were already struggling to find diesel.Brazil imports about 30% of the diesel it burns, nearly one liter in every three. Analysts saw a risk of shortages in October, when moving the grain harvest lifts consumption. Lula approved the subsidy last week precisely to face the rise in international prices.Explained: diesel A is the refinery product sold to distributors, before the mandatory blend with biodiesel that reaches filling stations. The subsidy, called "subvenção" in Brazil, is a Treasury payment per liter sold, given to producers and importers to cover part of the gap between domestic and international prices. That gap now exceeds R$3 per liter.How the subsidy cancels the increaseBy joining the new program, Petrobras gets an extra R$1 for each liter of diesel sold, which offsets the announced rise. Added to an earlier program, the reimbursement reaches R$2.12 per liter, still short of the full gap, Folha reported. In a statement released on Wednesday, the company said the program is "compatible with the interests of the company, preserving its flexibility in implementing the commercial strategy".The company also said its pricing follows market share, refinery optimization and profitability, and that it avoids immediate pass-throughs because of volatility in oil prices and the exchange rate, according to G1. It is the second fuel price move in a week: last Thursday Petrobras ended a R$0.44-per-liter gasoline discount, taking the average price to distributors to R$3.05, while a R$0.63 cut in federal taxes should leave gasoline R$0.19 per liter cheaper at the pump. Because the diesel subsidy lasts 30 days, the decision lands back on the government's desk in mid-October, at the height of harvest demand.

8.45% a year once expected inflation is stripped out: even after this Wednesday's (16) rate cut, Brazil keeps the highest real interest rate in the world among 40 tracked economies, according to a ranking by consultants MoneYou and Lev Intelligence reported by Folha, G1 and InfoMoney. A saver with 10,000 reais invested gains 845 reais above inflation over a year. For borrowers, the effect is the opposite: credit stays expensive.Copom, the committee that sets the Selic, Brazil's benchmark rate, cut it by a quarter point, from 14% to 13.75% a year, the fifth straight reduction, according to G1. The real rate fell from 9.30% in August's survey to 8.45%, yet Brazil stayed on top of the list, whose average is only 1.62%. Brazilian savers are offered a real return more than five times the group's average.Russia holds second place at 6.79%, followed by Colombia (6.33%) and Turkey (6.25%), according to Folha. In August, Brazil's lead over Russia was only 0.21 point (9.30% versus 9.09%); now it is 1.66 points. Brazil's official inflation, which ended August at 4.22% over 12 months, means a 100-real grocery basket from a year ago now costs 104.22 reais.What the real rate meansThe real rate shows how much money earns after expected inflation is discounted. The ranking combines inflation projected for the next 12 months, now at 4.71% according to Focus, the central bank's weekly survey of market analysts, with the one-year market interest rate, as Folha explains. In practice, 100 reais invested today would become 108.45 reais of purchasing power a year from now.Why the top spot did not changeThe escalation of the Middle East conflict has pushed oil prices up and led analysts in most countries to raise their inflation forecasts, which lowered real rates worldwide, according to MoneYou's report. Copom cut cautiously despite this risk, which could push fuel prices higher in Brazil, G1 reports. Chief economist Jason Vieira, who coordinates the survey, wrote in a report cited by InfoMoney that even a different Copom decision would not have changed the top of the ranking."Inflation expectations for the next 12 months were mostly revised upward across the countries in the ranking, creating a significant series of lower and negative real rates, amid an adverse scenario that remains open with the Middle East conflict", wrote Jason Vieira.In nominal terms, before inflation is discounted, Brazil slipped from third to fourth place, behind Turkey (37%), Argentina (29%) and Russia (14%). On the same day, the US Federal Reserve raised American rates for the first time since 2023, as InfoMoney reported, while 72.56% of the 164 countries analyzed kept their rates unchanged. For households, the effect is twofold: fixed-income investments still pay well above inflation, while installments and loans remain among the world's most expensive.

60% of Brazilians' data, from family photos to bank statements, is currently stored outside the country, according to figures presented by the government. To try to change that, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed into law on Tuesday (15) the Redata, a Special Taxation Regime for Data Center Services. In practice, companies that build or expand data centers in Brazil will pay less tax on the equipment they buy.The break runs for five years, until 2031. In exchange, every company that joins must reserve at least 10% of the processing and storage capacity installed under the benefit for the Brazilian market: one in every ten units of capacity has to serve local customers. Companies must also invest 2% of the value of equipment bought with the discount in research and innovation, the equivalent of R$ 2 for every R$ 100 spent.Explainer: a data center is a complex of servers, the computers that store and process large volumes of information. It is the physical home of the internet and of artificial intelligence: what we call the "cloud" actually sits in buildings like these, which run 24 hours a day and need constant cooling.The money involved is huge. Vice President Geraldo Alckmin said at the signing ceremony that a 100-megawatt project requires at least R$ 1 billion in construction and between R$ 4 billion and R$ 5 billion in equipment, according to TeleSíntese. The equipment bill alone is more than 40 times the estimated R$ 95 million jackpot of the Mega-Sena lottery drawn that same Tuesday.Which taxes fallThe regime suspends PIS/Cofins (federal levies on revenue and imports) and the IPI industrial products tax on purchases of electronic components, G1 and TeleSíntese report. When there is no equivalent domestic production, the import tax can be cut to zero. The law also creates tax benefits for exports of services by the sector.The text is bill PL 278/2026, introduced this year by then lawmaker José Guimarães (PT-CE), now a minister, and approved by the Senate on September 1, G1 reports. It replaces a provisional decree issued in September 2025 that lapsed in February without a vote in Congress. Fiscal backing for the program came from PLP 74/2026, a complementary bill approved this month, according to TeleSíntese.Gas and water at the center of the debateThe signing does not end the dispute, because the details still depend on a presidential decree and a ministerial order. The most sensitive point is what counts as low-carbon energy: G1 reports that the government has yet to decide whether natural gas makes the list. Brazil Journal reported that the renewables lobby is working to keep gas out, while an Agência eixos piece argues the government cannot "close the door" opened by Congress.Environmental groups criticize the high water consumption of these facilities, G1 reports. The law requires reports on the Water Usage Effectiveness indicator (WUE), capped at 0.05 liter of water per kilowatt-hour, roughly one glass for every 4 kilowatt-hours used. "Redata deals with the fundamental base of this digital economy," said Affonso Nina, executive president of Brasscom, a technology sector association, at the ceremony.On the regulation, Ceron, executive secretary of the Finance Ministry, told G1: "it is natural that regulation comes afterwards... we do not have a closed position on compensation yet, we are discussing it". The program also channels resources to industrial and technological development in Brazil's North, Northeast and Central West regions.

800 million reais. That is the figure banker Daniel Vorcaro was told to defend before Roberto Campos Neto, then president of Brazil's Central Bank, at a meeting on December 21, 2023, according to a report by the newspaper O Globo based on a Federal Police inquiry. The advice did not come from his own advisers: it came from staff of the central bank itself, the agency that supervises the banks where Brazilians keep their money.A forensic review of the banker's phone shows that Paulo Sérgio Neves de Souza, then deputy head of the Banking Supervision Department (Desup), sent a list of talking points that same day for the meeting with the "Presi". In testimony to the Federal Police, he confirmed the nickname referred to Campos Neto, as reported by Diário de São Paulo. One of the points: the sale of the bank Voiter to his former partner Augusto Lima would create net equity of 800 million reais, more than 43 thousand years of a Brazilian minimum wage.The script asked Vorcaro to defend Master's capitalization with tax credits tied to Banif, a Portuguese bank, mention pressure from the Credit Guarantee Fund (FGC) to cut guarantees, and promise a capital increase. Paulo Sérgio also suggested stressing that buying Will Bank, a digital lender strong in Brazil's Northeast, would let the group offer accounts and payment services to about 4 million clients of Credicesta, Master's payroll-lending arm. That is more people than live in any Brazilian state capital except São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.In brief: Desup is the central bank unit that supervises banks, reviews their books and can restrict their operations. The FGC is a fund paid for by the banks themselves that covers up to 250,000 reais (about 46,000 US dollars) per depositor when a bank fails; with Master under extrajudicial liquidation, that cap is what shields small savers.The approval and what followedMonths after the meeting, still under Campos Neto, the central bank approved the transfer of control of Will Financeira, owner of Will Bank, to the Master group; the deal closed in 2024. Campos Neto was summoned to testify as a witness in the inquiry, which also examines the conduct of other central bank directors. Both Master and Will Bank were placed in extrajudicial liquidation in early 2026.A parallel consultancyThe episode was not isolated, according to the Federal Police. On February 5, 2024, Paulo Sérgio sent another list of arguments for a meeting with the central bank's enforcement director, Ailton Aquino dos Santos, and the two staff members reviewed Master's official letters before they were filed with the regulator and the FGC. On October 2, 2025, the Desup chief, Belline Santana, created a WhatsApp group named "Master", with himself, Paulo Sérgio and Vorcaro, to speed up the exchange of draft documents; in April of that year, Paulo Sérgio had edited parts of a Master reply to Desup, the department where he worked.Investigators concluded that the staff knew their conduct was criminal and tried to hide the content of their chats with short messages and voice calls, as reported by SBT News. The inquiry mapped indications of monthly payments and perks funded by Vorcaro, such as an international trip to Disney with Paulo Sérgio's family. The Federal Police report sums up the investigators' view:"Obviously, it is not reasonable for a public servant in the area of bank supervision to show commitment to the private business of those he supervises, or to congratulate one of the bankers for becoming owner of another financial institution."

Financial market economists now expect Brazil's inflation to end 2026 at 4.9%, down from 5% a week earlier. The estimate was published on Monday (14) in the Boletim Focus, a weekly Central Bank survey of more than 100 financial institutions, and marks the third straight weekly cut. For households, 4.9% means a grocery basket that cost 100 reais at the end of 2025 should cost about 104.90 reais by this December.The relief is still limited against the Central Bank's own goal: the official target is 3%, with a tolerance band of 1.5% to 4.5%, and the projected 4.9% remains above the ceiling. According to Folha de S.Paulo, it is the first time since May 18 that the Focus survey puts the index below 5%. The estimate peaked at 5.33% on June 22 and has fallen ever since.In brief: the Boletim Focus is a weekly Central Bank poll of banks and consultancies, published as the median of their bets on inflation, interest rates, the exchange rate and growth. It is the most closely watched gauge of what markets expect from the Brazilian economy.A slower economyThe growth forecast also fell: economists now see GDP (the sum of all goods and services produced in the country) expanding 1.89% in 2026, down from 1.93%, the lowest reading since May 25, according to Folha. The economy grew 2.3% in 2025, according to the national statistics agency IBGE, and a weaker pace usually reaches households as fewer job openings and smaller raises. For 2027, the estimate fell from 1.5% to 1.45%, and for 2028 from 1.96% to 1.87%, according to InfoMoney.The lower inflation forecast has everyday explanations: electricity bills and the gas pump. Brazil's benchmark consumer price index (IPCA, measured by the IBGE) fell 0.32% in August, the agency reported on Friday (11), helped by cheaper power after a temporary bonus from the Itaipu dam, plus declines in airfares, some foods and fuels. The improvement comes despite the war in the Middle East keeping oil expensive, and after the government cut fuel taxes and kept subsidies in place last week, according to news site G1.Rates and the currencyOn Brazil's benchmark interest rate, the Selic, now at 14% a year after four cuts in 2026, economists expect one more reduction of a quarter point, to 13.75%, at this week's meeting of the Copom, the Central Bank committee that sets the rate. According to Folha, it should be the last cut of the year. The Selic shapes how much Brazilians pay on car loans and credit card debt, so the relief for borrowers remains small.For the following years, the market sees the Selic at 12% by the end of 2027, 10.5% in 2028 and 10% in 2029. The dollar is expected to end 2026 at 5.20 reais, a forecast held for 13 straight weeks, with the end-2027 estimate down from 5.30 to 5.28 reais. Inflation projections for 2028 and 2029 were unchanged at 3.8% and 3.5%, while the 2027 figure edged up from 4.29% to 4.30%.The Central Bank has said that slower growth is part of its strategy to contain inflation, since a cooler economy reduces pressure on prices. In an election year, however, the government has been stimulating consumption and cutting taxes, which, according to G1, makes that control harder.

Brent crude, the main international oil benchmark, was up 2.8% on Monday (14), at $107.54 a barrel. For anyone filling a car tank, this is the kind of news that tends to reach the pump: costlier oil raises the price of gasoline, diesel and airfares over time, and adds to inflation. WTI, the benchmark for the US market, was up 2.9%, at $102.93.The rally follows new attacks on Saudi energy facilities and on ships in the Gulf, according to Brazilian news site G1. Saudi authorities said the East-West pipeline, which crosses the kingdom and lets the country export oil without passing through the Strait of Hormuz, was shut temporarily after a drone strike. The halt threatens up to 4% of global supply, as much as one in every 25 barrels the world consumes.With the pipeline down, the Red Sea port of Yanbu holds enough stock to keep exports going for only five to seven days, InfoMoney reported, citing three industry sources familiar with Saudi shipments. Beyond that window, exports are at risk. In practical terms, the market is watching a clock of about one week.How it works: Brent and WTI are futures contracts, deals to buy or sell oil at a set future date, and they act as the market's reference prices. Brent guides much of the trading outside the United States; WTI is the gauge for American oil.Attacks at sea and on landA vessel in the Strait of Hormuz was hit by a projectile, sparking a fire and forcing the crew to abandon ship, the UK maritime security agency UKMTO reported on Sunday. Iran said one person died and four crew members were injured on an Iranian commercial ship struck off the country's coast. On land, Saudi state media released videos of damage to homes and a mosque in Jazan province, which it blamed on a Houthi attack.The Houthis, an Iran-aligned group from Yemen, said they had also attacked a Saudi military base in a neighboring province. On Friday, they reached Perim island, moving to tighten control over the Bab el-Mandeb strait, another oil route that has carried 4% to 5% of global supply in recent months.No peace talks in sight"This follows an escalation of attacks on energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, including the crucial East-West pipeline," commodity strategists at bank ING said, in comments cited by InfoMoney. They noted it remains unclear how long the pipeline will stay offline.Oil had already jumped 8% last week and crossed $100 for the first time since July. A meeting between Gulf countries and Iran to discuss the Strait of Hormuz had been set for Monday in Oman, but Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi said it was postponed. According to the reports, the war started six months ago, launched by the United States and Israel, and no peace talks have taken place since a provisional deal collapsed in June.

R$ 12 million: that is the total in bribes that an internal inquiry at Brazil's Central Bank says Banco Master paid to two of the institution's own employees, according to a G1 report published on Sunday (13). The two worked in the unit that checks whether banks follow the rules and can fine them. That is the work that protects Brazilians who hold accounts, savings or loans at banks.According to the inquiry's report, Paulo Sérgio Neves de Souza, former head of the supervision directorate, allegedly received R$ 8 million, part of it while still in the job, and Belline Santana, a former chief of banking supervision, about R$ 4 million. Supervision is the Central Bank branch that examines how banks operate and applies penalties. Together, the amounts equal 200 years of wages for someone earning R$ 5,000 a month.How it works: the inquiry, called a sindicância, is an internal probe run by the institution itself, with no power to arrest or press criminal charges. It can lead to an administrative case and dismissal, and its findings go to the Federal Police, which handles the criminal side. In this case, the material was also sent to the CGU, the federal government's watchdog for the civil service.How the money allegedly movedThe transfers were disguised as ordinary business deals with companies tied to Daniel Vorcaro, the banker who controls Master, according to the inquiry. Paulo Sérgio claims the money came from the sale of a small farm in Minas Gerais state to Pipe Participações, a company owned by Fabiano Zettel, Vorcaro's brother-in-law, and from later leasing the same land back. The Central Bank concluded those deals may also be bribes."There are strong indications that the purchase and sale contract signed between Paulo Sérgio and Pipe Participações was a mere artifice to conceal the receipt of a bribe," the Central Bank report says.Belline says he was paid for consulting work for a company called Varajo, owned by Leonardo Palhares, whom investigators describe as one of Vorcaro's operators. In his account, the job was a financial education project for young people from poor neighborhoods, later billed through his company, Inspiração Projetos Educacionais. The Central Bank commission found the reports he delivered too thin to justify a payment of R$ 4 million, more than 66 years of wages at R$ 5,000 a month, and concluded the contracts were "a mere simulation to conceal improper payments".How the suspicion began and what comes nextColleagues reported that the two men were spending beyond their public-service salaries, and an anonymous complaint reinforced the alert, Central Bank staff told GloboNews. The inquiry compared the men's assets with their pay and found their wealth had grown far faster than their income allowed. Both have been suspended since January, with no access to the Central Bank building or its systems.In March, the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), which investigates wrongdoing in the civil service, opened an administrative case that could end in their dismissal. The findings were also sent to the Federal Police, which runs the criminal investigation. On Friday (11), the men's lawyers said they always acted within their duties and that their contacts with Master were strictly institutional, with no interference in supervision.

Brazil's official inflation fell 0.32% in August, after a 0.07% rise in July, the national statistics agency IBGE reported on Friday (11). It was the sharpest monthly drop since August 2022, when prices fell 0.36%. For household budgets, a monthly basket worth R$ 1,000 ended about R$ 3 cheaper.What drove the dropThe electricity bill did the heavy lifting: residential power got 7.63% cheaper with the Itaipu bonus, a discount that returned surplus revenue from the state-owned hydroelectric plant to consumers, worth about R$ 15 on a R$ 200 bill. Housing costs fell 1.87% as a result. "This result for the Housing group is the lowest for an August since the Real Plan," the 1994 stabilization program, said IBGE researcher José Fernando Pereira Gonçalves.Food and drinks (-0.34%) fell for a third straight month: potatoes got almost 20% cheaper, and tomatoes, onions and carrots dropped more than 10%. Eggs fell 4.15% and ground coffee 1.86%. In transport (-0.86%), airfares sank 13.17%, ethanol 3.95% and gasoline 0.59%.So far this year prices are up 3.11%; over 12 months, up 4.22%, down from 4.44% through July and inside the tolerance band of the official target. The target, set by the National Monetary Council, is 3%, with a band from 1.5% to 4.5%. In grocery terms, a shopping run that cost R$ 500 a year ago runs about R$ 521 today.In plain terms: the IPCA, the index behind these numbers, tracks 377 goods and services bought by families earning 1 to 40 minimum wages, across ten metropolitan areas, Brasília and five state capitals. Deflation means the average of that basket fell, not that everything got cheaper: according to Agência Brasil, 54% of the surveyed items still rose in price in August, up from 50% in July.Interest rates in viewThe reading came in below forecasts: the Focus bulletin, the central bank's weekly poll of market analysts, expected a 0.23% drop. According to the newspaper O Globo, the deflation raises the odds of another cut to the Selic, the benchmark rate that anchors loan and financing costs, next week. Even so, analysts still see inflation at 5% by the end of 2026, above the 4.5% ceiling.The relief may not last: the Itaipu bonus applied only to August bills. "We do not know what the final result will be, but we know the index tends to rise," said IBGE analyst Fernando Gonçalves.

R$ 1.3 trillion: that is the interest bill Brazil pays, in the figure cited by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The number matters to anyone paying installments, because Brazil's benchmark rate, the Selic, stands at 14% a year, the reference used to price credit, equal to R$ 114 for every R$ 100 borrowed over a year. It was to argue for lower rates that Lula told a campaign rally to stop the "nonsense of running a surplus".He spoke on Saturday (12) at a campaign rally in Curitiba, in southern Brazil, as he seeks reelection in October's presidential vote. According to G1, Lula said the economy must grow to create jobs and that the government needs to invest for that to happen. In his view, this means giving up the goal of a positive fiscal balance."To create jobs, the economy has to grow, and for the economy to grow, the government has to invest. And for the government to invest, we need to stop this nonsense of running a surplus, running a surplus, of fiscal control. Because Brazil's great debt is the interest rate we pay, R$ 1.3 trillion. The rest is investment," Lula said.What a primary surplus isExplainer: a primary surplus is the positive result of government accounts, when it collects more than it spends in a year, excluding interest payments on debt. The opposite is a deficit, and official projections point to red ink for the whole of Lula's current term. In deficit years, the public debt grows.A promise left behindSaturday's remarks contradict the governing plan the Workers' Party filed with the TSE, Brazil's electoral court, which promises "responsible fiscal policy". They also diverge from what Lula himself said in late August, in an interview with TV Globo: "We will deliver a surplus". At the time, he recalled that the deficit stood at 2.8% when he returned to office, that the latest result was 0.8%, and that it would now turn positive.Finance Minister Dario Durigan, who has been speaking for the campaign, reiterated in recent weeks that the government would return to surplus from 2027 if Lula wins reelection, according to G1. The budget proposal sent to Congress projects a positive balance of R$ 18.6 billion, after a full term forecast in the red. The goal is to make room for cuts in the Selic, which in real terms is among the world's highest rates.Public debt reached 82% of GDP in June, the highest level since the pandemic, up more than 10 percentage points in the partial count of Lula's current term, according to G1. Put simply: for every R$ 100 of goods and services Brazil produces in a year, R$ 82 correspond to the accumulated public sector debt. Analysts cited by G1 say the repeated deficits put pressure on rates and indebtedness, and economists note that cutting the Selic by government decision does not guarantee cheaper credit, because long-term rates are set by the market.

Brazil's federal government has already opened R$ 27.1 billion in extraordinary budget credits in 2026 to keep the international fuel price surge from reaching Brazilian gasoline and diesel prices in full, according to the UOL column by Paula Gama published on Saturday (12). That public money is what has been holding the liter at the pump since March, even with Brent crude back above US$ 100 a barrel. The tally grew days after Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, canceled a gasoline price increase it had announced for its refineries; the newspaper O Globo, which reported the retreat, projects pump prices could fall by up to 2%.Six credits opened since March make up the total: R$ 10 billion, R$ 550 million, R$ 3.33 billion, R$ 3.473 billion, R$ 3.152 billion and, this week, R$ 6.605 billion. The latest came in a provisional measure (a rule with the force of law that Congress must approve) that allocated R$ 5.607 billion to road diesel and R$ 998 million to the subsidy program for gasoline and diesel producers and importers. Not all of it has left the treasury: public data from the ANP, the agency that regulates fuels, show that only R$ 7.79 billion had actually been paid out by August 31.What is an extraordinary budget credit?An extraordinary credit is the authorization to spend beyond what the annual budget law allowed, normally used in emergencies. It works like a pre-approved card limit: it clears the spending before any bill is paid. That explains the gap between the R$ 27.1 billion opened and the R$ 7.79 billion disbursed, as the column explains: part of the money covers future periods, and part lapsed when earlier provisional measures expired.What changes at the pumpSince May the model has been a subsidy: the government paid producers and importers, who had to deduct the amount from their sale price and prove the reduction to the ANP. For gasoline, the payment was about R$ 0.44 per liter, at an estimated cost of R$ 1.2 billion a month; for diesel, the estimate was R$ 1.7 billion a month. This week the design changed: gasoline left the subsidy for a R$ 0.63-per-liter cut in federal taxes, federal taxes on ethanol were zeroed, and diesel gained another R$ 1 per liter, on top of the R$ 1.12 in place until September 26.On a 40-liter car tank, the gasoline cut alone means R$ 25.20 less per fill-up. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the measures on Wednesday (9), less than a month before the presidential election, and the government estimates the new package at about R$ 7 billion a month, according to UOL. The ministers calculate that the fuel measures have already cost R$ 25 billion since they were announced, and Finance Ministry Executive Secretary Rogério Ceron said the R$ 2 billion in tax relief on gasoline and ethanol will be offset by more than R$ 10 billion in extra oil revenue this month, G1 reported.The force behind the bill is the oil shock caused by the Middle East conflict, which pushed Brent back above US$ 100 this week. More than 25% of the diesel consumed in Brazil is imported, so exchange rates and international prices feed into freight costs and from there into food prices, the UOL column notes. "We will not allow this irresponsible war to reach your pocket, much less the food on the Brazilian people's table," Lula said in a video released on Wednesday.The playbook differs from 2022, when Jair Bolsonaro, also in an election year, eased prices by cutting taxes: Supplementary Law 194 capped the state-level ICMS tax and the federal government zeroed PIS/Cofins and Cide levies. This time the expense shows up directly on the federal government's books, which pays the bill instead of giving up revenue. Economist Rodrigo Provazzi, quoted by the column, said the subsidy is "more complex to operate, less transparent to the public and more susceptible to risks of inefficiency".Tax consultant Francisco Arrighi argues the cost only changes hands: "In the end, it is always the taxpayer who pays, either through future taxes or through currency depreciation". Provazzi calls the risk of withdrawing the benefit with oil still expensive the "rebound effect", a choice between spending more to keep the relief and watching prices jump. The R$ 27.1 billion already authorized this year shows how far the government has gone down the first path.

R$ 700,000, almost 30 years of wages for a Brazilian worker earning R$ 2,000 a month. A report by Coaf, Brazil's financial intelligence council, ties that amount to a transfer made by Isaac Sidney, president of Febraban, the federation that represents Brazil's largest banks, to a company linked to Daniel Vorcaro, owner of Banco Master, and to Fabiano Zettel, Vorcaro's brother-in-law. The story was reported exclusively by Folha de S.Paulo on Friday night (Sept. 11) and had not been confirmed by other outlets as of this writing.According to the document, cited by the Folha, the money left Sidney's account on June 8, 2022 through a Ted, the electronic transfer system used between Brazilian banks. The transfer came one day after the account of the company Super Empreendimentos was opened at the Formiga branch, in the state of Minas Gerais, of the credit cooperative Sicoob Credifor.Sidney's amount is a fraction of what the account took in that month: R$ 9.9 million in total, more than someone saving R$ 2,000 a month would gather over 400 years. Of that, R$ 9.2 million, about 13 times Sidney's transfer, came from Zettel, described by the Folha as the financial operator of the Master scheme, in five transfers by Ted and Pix, Brazil's instant payment system. Outflows in the same period reached R$ 9.8 million, mostly to real estate companies.The context: Coaf (Conselho de Controle de Atividades Financeiras) is the federal body that receives reports from banks on operations with unusual values. Such reports flag movement outside normal patterns; they do not prove a crime and often feed investigations by the Federal Police and prosecutors.Prior connection to MasterThis is not the first time Sidney's name has come up in connection with the bank. In July, it became public that he took a R$ 5.5 million loan from Master in 2020, nearly eight times the transfer now flagged, to buy a duplex apartment. At the time, Sidney said documents proved the money went to the purchase and that the loan was repaid in December 2021, and he called the disclosure retaliation for his public criticism of Master and of Febraban's work.Reached by the Folha on Friday, Sidney said the operation in the Super account was the purchase of credit rights, meaning rights to collect future payments that can be traded, through a "duly formalized assignment instrument" signed more than four years ago and recorded in his income tax return. He said the operation is private and regular and was fully paid with his own money of lawful origin.The Master caseBanco Master is under investigation by Brazil's Federal Police. According to G1, which obtained a PF report, the bank used a company created with R$ 100 of capital to simulate R$ 7.155 billion in payroll loans that were later sold to Banco de Brasília (BRB).

After less than 24 hours, the strike at Banco do Brasil, the state-controlled bank, came to an end across most of the country. In union assemblies on Friday (11), most of the regional unions approved a deal with management, and branches are expected to return to normal service in the regions that accepted it. At Caixa Econômica Federal, the federal government-owned savings bank, the national stoppage that began on Thursday (10) still has no end date.What the Banco do Brasil deal includesThe deal puts the PLR, Brazil's annual profit-sharing payment tied to the bank's results, in workers' accounts within 72 hours of its signature by all unions. It also grants a one-off payment of R$ 3,000, nearly two thirds of a R$ 5,000 monthly salary, to the group defined in the bank's 2026 debt-collection campaign, plus 35 days of paternity leave, career-plan advances and paid time for a stoppage held on August 20. In Belo Horizonte, the proposal passed with 64.7% of the votes, two of every three participants, according to the local bank workers' union.Understand: bank employees in Brazil negotiate on two levels. The CCT, the national convention signed on Wednesday (9) between Fenaban, the federation representing the banks, and 245 unions, covers about 414,000 workers at 171 banks through August 31, 2028. The ACT is the separate agreement each bank, including Banco do Brasil, negotiates with its own staff, and every regional union votes alone on accepting it or staying on strike.The CCT fully replaces inflation as measured by the INPC, the index used for salary adjustments in Brazil, and adds a real gain of 0.6 percentage points in 2026 and 2027. With the INPC at 3.98% over 12 months, according to the national statistics agency IBGE, the total raise comes close to 4.6%: on a R$ 5,000 salary, the difference between simply matching inflation and the agreed deal is about R$ 30 a month. The adjustment also applies to meal vouchers, allowances and profit sharing, and the convention adds rules on mental health, harassment and the right to disconnect outside working hours.The deal did not pass everywhere at Banco do Brasil. According to G1, about 18 unions rejected the proposal and remain on strike, including Angra dos Reis and bases in Bahia; in the first round of assemblies, 60 entities had voted no, among them Brasília and Rio de Janeiro, which changed position in less than a day. "The result was the fruit of a negotiation cycle marked by the participation and mobilization of the workers," said Fernanda Lopes, coordinator of the CEBB, the bank's employees' commission.Why Caixa workers stay outAt Caixa, more than 90% of the regional unions, nine in ten, rejected the bank's offer for renewing its specific agreement on the eve of the strike, and the central dispute is Saúde Caixa, the employees' health plan. The bank presented a final proposal on Friday: payment of the adjusted salary, the profit sharing and a R$ 3,000 bonus on September 18, plus a rise in its funding cap for the plan from 6.5% to 8%. According to Folhapress, Caixa threatened to take the dispute to the labor court if there is no agreement.The unions want the funding cap scrapped, a return to the historic split of 70% paid by the bank and 30% by beneficiaries, and an end to charges based on age. In a statement, Caixa said it keeps "the dialogue open" with employee representatives. While branches stay shut, both banks are telling customers to use apps, online banking, ATMs, lottery agents and banking correspondents.

Vice President Geraldo Alckmin has promised business leaders a primary surplus of at least 0.5% of GDP in 2027, if President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wins re-election in Brazil's October vote. In household terms, it is like a family earning 5,000 reais a month starting to save 25 reais instead of spending it all. In Alckmin's view, the effort paves the way for lower interest rates and cheaper credit.A promise at a business dinnerAlckmin spoke at a dinner with executives in Brasilia on Wednesday night (Sept. 9), according to Folha de S.Paulo. The meeting is an attempt to rebuild the pact that business sectors sealed with Lula in 2022, when the common goal was defeating Jair Bolsonaro. This time the main rival is Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the former president.At the dinner, the vice president called for cutting privileges enjoyed by members of the judiciary and of Congress as a way to curb waste of public money. According to accounts heard by Folha, he said Brazilians are angry about the high salaries and benefits in those branches. In his view, it must be made clear that Lula is the one who can fight them.Understand: the primary surplus compares what the government collects with what it spends over a year, leaving out interest payments on the debt. Think of it as a family's balance before paying the card bills that carry interest. A positive result signals that the country lives within its budget, which tends to help pull interest rates down.Interest rates at the center of the talkAfter hearing complaints about interest rates, Alckmin compared the present with 2020. He said Jair Bolsonaro's government that year spent 10% of GDP more than it collected and paid not a cent of the debt. On the household yardstick, that is a family earning 5,000 reais a month overspending by 500 reais every month without paying a single bill.Defending Lula's record, the vice president said the primary deficit has been zeroed this term. The target of a surplus of at least 0.5% of GDP for next year was also reported by Brasil 247. Alckmin argued for pushing the fiscal adjustment further, on the reasoning that sound public accounts push rates down.

A jump of 86% in two weeks measures the wave of foreign bets on a Brazilian stock rally after the October election. The move sits in call options on the EWZ, the main Brazil-focused stock ETF traded in New York, which went from 2.8 million open contracts on August 24 to 5.2 million on Friday (September 4), according to Bloomberg data compiled by Valor Investe. For investors in Brazil, the volume matters because part of its effect can spill into the shares traded on the B3, the São Paulo exchange.The size of the jump is easy to feel at the checkout: an item that cost 100 reais on August 24 would reach the register at 186 reais on Friday if it had matched the growth in contracts. It is the largest stock of such bets since 2007, the year the first iPhone came out, according to Bloomberg. The move tracks the tightening race: on August 24, when the BTG/Nexus poll showed President Lula at 46% and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro at 45% in a possible runoff, the EWZ had about 2.8 million open calls.Bloomberg had already spotted, in late August, growing bets on Ibovespa and EWZ options meant to capture a rally in Brazilian assets should Flávio win, VEJA reports. The fund itself has climbed about 15% in the last three weeks, to its highest level since mid-May, according to the financial outlet The Kobeissi Letter. Part of the market reads a change of government as potentially positive for Brazilian stocks, on expectations of stronger commitment to public accounts and a friendlier agenda for privatizations, notes Valor Investe.How the bet worksIn brief: the EWZ, officially the iShares MSCI Brazil ETF, works as a slice of Brazil on the American exchange, holding shares of Vale, Petrobras and Itaú, among others, and lets a foreign investor buy into the country without trading on the B3. A call option works like a deposit on a house: you pay a fraction of the value today for the right to close the deal at a fixed price by a future date. If the price rises, the buyer profits; if it does not, only the deposit is lost.The market's largest positions sit at strike prices of $43 and $45, expiring on November 20, almost a month after the possible runoff set for October 25. Together they add up to about 1.4 million contracts, according to a CryptoBriefing tally cited by Valor Investe. With the EWZ trading between $38 and $39, the contracts bet on gains of 10% to 19% over the current price, depending on the level and the reference day.While calls nearly doubled since late August, puts, the options tied to protection or bets on a fall, stayed flat near 1.5 million contracts, according to VEJA. The put-to-call ratio fell to about 0.3, which in plain language means roughly three downside bets for every ten upside bets. That is an unusual imbalance in the options market for the Brazilian ETF.What it means for Brazil"What is behind this movement is mainly the positioning of foreign investors for the Brazilian electoral scenario," Heitor de Nicola, an equities specialist at AVIN, told Valor Investe."The result ends up triggering what the market calls the 'electoral trade', with foreign investors building positions in the EWZ with an eye on a possible change of power," says Juliana Benvenuto, allocation and intelligence coordinator at Avenue.The effect can reach the B3 through the market's plumbing. "As these positions are built and the EWZ rises, market makers need to adjust their hedges, which can increase demand for Brazilian stocks," Nicola explains. The institutions selling the options buy the assets tied to the fund to protect themselves, and that extra demand feeds the rally.The election does not explain the move on its own. The DXY index, which measures the dollar against a basket of major currencies, is below 100 points, a setting that tends to favor emerging markets, and oil has approached $100 a barrel amid Middle East tensions, which helps Petrobras, a company that accounts for about 14% of the EWZ portfolio, according to Benvenuto.Not all 5.2 million contracts are pure bets on a Flávio win, since options are also used for protection and combined strategies, VEJA cautions. Alexandre Pletes, head of equities at Faz Capital, notes that part of the domestically driven shares still trade at a discount and that Bank of America recently recommended buying Brazilian stocks, though there is no consensus among the big international houses. For the Kobeissi Letter, a dollar recovery would be the decisive test for these bets.

R$ 1.87 billion. That is how much 18 Brazilian public sector pension funds put into Banco Master's letters, money meant to pay future retirements and pensions. Documents from the Federal Police made public on Thursday show that the bank's owner, Daniel Vorcaro, kept a WhatsApp group with the two heads of the central bank department in charge of supervising his institution, and asked one of them for help against a rule change that threatened those sales.The group, named "Master", was created on October 2, 2025 by Belline Santana, then head of Desup, the central bank's Department of Banking Supervision, the unit that inspects banks across the country. "Good afternoon. I created this group to make our dialogue easier," Santana wrote, according to a screenshot reproduced in the police filing. The third member was Paulo Sérgio Neves de Souza, Desup's deputy head at the time and a former director of oversight at the central bank.Investigators concluded that the two officials, who have since left their posts, at times behaved as "employees" of the banker and received benefits in return. The filing, signed on February 27, 2026, draws on messages taken from Vorcaro's phone and on central bank records. The files came out after Justice André Mendonça of the Supreme Federal Court, Brazil's top court, lifted secrecy on proceedings tied to Banco Master; Folha reports the decision followed a request from the court's president, Edson Fachin.Drafts reviewed by the regulators themselvesOn October 27, 2025, Vorcaro sent the group a draft letter addressed to Desup itself, the department his contacts ran. "Here is a draft for your assessment," he wrote; after a voice call from Santana, he sent a new version with the request "Please check whether it works," as reported by BBC News Brasil.On April 25, 2025, Souza reviewed Master's reply to a central bank summons. Among his suggestions, swapping "revenue raising" for "fund raising" and fixing a date. At the end, he wrote: "Important to file quickly."According to CNN Brasil, on October 13, 2025 Vorcaro floated in the group the idea that Desup could remove restrictions on BRB, the bank controlled by the government of the federal district of Brasília, buying payroll loan portfolios. Souza called the decision difficult because the matter belonged to the central bank's legal office, but he suggested a letter stating that all of the portfolios were already in BRB's hands.The police also found that Souza sent talking points for Vorcaro to raise in meetings with the central bank's leadership, and warned him before a February 2024 meeting with then oversight director Ailton Aquino that he could be questioned about his ties to asset manager Reag and its founder, João Carlos Mansur.Explainer: letras financeiras, or bank letters, are debt securities banks issue to raise money, without the protection of the FGC deposit insurance fund, which repays up to R$ 250,000 per customer when a bank fails. Public sector pension funds bought them because they were supposed to generate returns to pay future pensions.A request against a pension ruleOn May 24, 2024, Vorcaro asked Souza for "help from the central bank on an issue," according to Folha. He said large banks were lobbying Previc, the regulator of private pension funds, to drop institutions rated S3, the tier of small banks with assets between 0.1% and 1% of GDP, from a list of eligible institutional investments. Master was an S3 bank: it held 0.57% of the financial system's total assets, less than 1% of the money handled by the country's banks.In Vorcaro's view, the change, combined with a new FGC rule, would hurt his business. Folha found that state and municipal pension regimes had concentrated up to 20% of their assets in Master securities without FGC coverage, with 18 funds investing R$ 1.87 billion. The largest single amount came from Rioprevidência, the Rio de Janeiro state employees' fund: R$ 970 million, more than half the total, followed by Amprev, of Amapá state, with R$ 400 million.Master was in trouble when, on March 28, 2025, BRB announced a deal to buy 58% of the bank's capital. According to the police, BRB poured about R$ 12 billion into payroll loan portfolios of "highly dubious" origin that proved to be "nonexistent or in default", more than six times what the pension funds had invested.The findings are part of a Federal Police submission to the Supreme Court and have not yet been judged. Folha says it contacted the lawyers of the two former central bank officials and received no reply by publication time.

A cut of R$ 0.19 per liter, roughly R$ 9.50 on a 50-liter tank: that is what stands after Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, withdrew a gasoline price increase on Thursday (Sept. 10). If the reduction is passed on in full, drivers pay less every time they fill up, and pump prices may fall by 2%, according to estimates obtained by the newspaper O Globo. The move comes less than a month before the first round of Brazil's general election.On Wednesday night (Sept. 9), at 8:44 p.m., the company had announced a R$ 0.19 per liter increase at its refineries, following its practice of using federal subsidies to soften the oil price surge that came after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the newspaper reported. At 12:53 a.m. on Thursday, it distributed a correction saying there would be no increase after all. The average price of gasoline A (pure gasoline, before the mandatory ethanol blend that creates what is sold at stations) now stands at R$ 3.05 per liter to distributors, a level that still picks up state taxes and margins before reaching the pump.Why the price fellThe mechanics: since May, gasoline carried a R$ 0.44 per liter discount paid by the federal government to Petrobras, a mechanism known as an economic subsidy and created by Provisional Measure 1.358/2026, a presidential act with the force of law. That measure expired and the discount ended. The government's new package cut PIS and Cofins, federal taxes embedded in fuel prices, by R$ 0.63 per liter, and because the tax cut is larger than the discontinued discount, the net result is a reduction of R$ 0.19 per liter.The overnight correction gives no reason for the reversal and says only the following:"Contrary to what was previously informed, the change in the price of Petrobras gasoline at points of sale will correspond only to the suspension of the discount"Asked whether it had consulted its board or government representatives, the company said pricing decisions "are taken exclusively within the Executive Group for Markets and Prices (Gemp)", a body formed by directors. One explanation heard by O Globo is a misunderstanding: the decree on the tax break "was complex to understand", according to a source who asked not to be named. Government officials, in turn, concluded that the company miscalculated, since the whole subsidy operation had been coordinated to shield consumers.The election at the center of the debateReports from the investment banks Itaú BBA and BTG Pactual said the reversal raised doubts about the independence of the company's pricing policy. "Without a shadow of a doubt", the decision was driven by the election, said Vitor Sousa, an analyst at Genial Investimentos, noting that the gap between international prices and those charged by Petrobras is wide. He compares the moment with 2010 to 2014, when the government of Dilma Rousseff used the company to hold down inflation and it "became a tool of monetary policy".In the stock market, the surge of oil to US$ 107.63 a barrel spoke louder: Petrobras preferred shares (non-voting) closed up 1.45% at R$ 49.12, and common shares (voting) rose 1.77% to R$ 54.64. About 80% of the company's results come from exploration and production, so pricier barrels lift revenue.Diesel remains under pressure: imports cover 25% to 30% of demand, the fuel has accumulated a 13% increase since the war in Iran began, and there is no political room for a refinery increase before the election, in the assessment of Sérgio Araujo, president of Abicom, a group that represents fuel importers. According to O Globo, the cost of fuel subsidies has already reached R$ 37.5 billion, and estimates cited by the newspaper suggest the package can shave 0.15 percentage point off the IPCA, Brazil's official inflation index.

Brazil's official inflation index, the IPCA, fell 0.32% in August, the national statistics agency IBGE reported on Friday (11). It was the first monthly decline in a year, since August 2025 (-0.11%), and the largest since August 2022 (-0.36%). In practical terms, a basket of bills and groceries that cost 500 reais (about $98) in July came in at roughly 498 reais in August.The main driver was household electricity, which got 7.63% cheaper as the Itaipu bonus was credited on bills issued during the month. The power bill alone cut 0.33 percentage point from the index. Without it, the IPCA would have risen 0.01%, according to Fernando Gonçalves, who manages the survey at IBGE.The housing group fell 1.87%, its steepest drop in more than 30 years; in July, the index had still risen 0.07%. "This result for the housing group is the lowest for an August since the Real Plan," IBGE researcher José Fernando Pereira Gonçalves told news site g1, referring to the 1994 stabilization plan.Explainer: deflation is a broad decline in prices, the opposite of inflation. The Itaipu bonus returns to consumers part of the surplus from electricity sales at the plant Brazil shares with Paraguay; it appears on bills once a year and, according to Folha, is expected to fade from bills as soon as September. The yellow tariff flag, a surcharge mechanism, also remained in force, adding 1.885 reais to the bill for every 100 kWh consumed.What else got cheaperAirfares fell 13.17% and app-based rides got 4.57% cheaper. At the pump, ethanol dropped 3.95%, diesel 0.80% and gasoline 0.59%. Groceries eaten at home fell 0.61%, led by potatoes, down 19.89%: a kilo that cost 5 reais in July went for about 4 reais in August.Not everything fell. Personal expenses rose 1.30%, piped gas 1.74% and household goods 0.64%. The food and drinks group ended the month down 0.34%, and transport down 0.86%.The 12-month pictureOver 12 months, inflation eased to 4.22%, from 4.44% through July: prices are still rising for people on wages, just more slowly. Year to date, the IPCA is up 3.11%. For the second month in a row, the index stayed below the 4.5% ceiling of the Central Bank's target, set at 3% with a tolerance of 1.5 point in either direction.The drop was stronger than financial markets had expected; analysts forecast a 0.28% decline, according to Bloomberg. After the release, the dollar opened 0.29% lower against the real, at 5.086 reais, at 9:54 a.m., Folha reported. The paper says the bonus effect should vanish from power bills as early as September.

R$ 0.19 per liter was the gasoline price increase that Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, announced on Wednesday night (Sept 9) and scrapped about four hours later, in the early hours of Thursday. In practice, the move ended up going the other way: distributors will now buy fuel from the company paying R$ 0.19 less per liter. According to InfoMoney, the increase was announced to the press at 8:44 p.m. and the correction came at 12:53 a.m.The original note said the average price of gasolina A, the refinery-grade fuel Petrobras sells to distributors before taxes and ethanol blending, would rise to R$ 3.24 per liter as of Thursday. The correction, also published on the website of Petrobras's own news agency, set it at R$ 3.05. The gap between the two figures is exactly the increase that was canceled."Unlike previously informed, the change in the price of Petrobras gasoline at points of sale will correspond only to the suspension of the discount. For distributors, the effect will be a reduction of R$ 0.19 in the price perceived with taxes," the company's correction note reads.How it works: gasolina A leaves the refinery at R$ 3.05, but a liter costs an average R$ 6.51 at Brazilian pumps, more than double, according to ANP, the regulator that tracks fuel prices. The difference adds federal and state taxes, the blend with ethanol and the margins of distributors and gas stations. At R$ 0.19 per liter, the figure adds up to R$ 9.50 on a 50-liter tank.Why an increase became a cutThe correction followed a swap of benefits. With the end of Provisional Measure 1.358/2026, a temporary decree with the force of law, Petrobras stopped applying as of Thursday a R$ 0.44-per-liter discount granted under a federal subsidy program. Because the government also cut R$ 0.63 per liter in PIS/Cofins, federal taxes on fuels, the net result for distributors is a drop: the tax break exceeds the discontinued discount by R$ 0.19.On Wednesday the government also zeroed taxation on ethanol; both measures run from Sept 10 to Oct 9. For diesel, President Lula signed a provisional measure creating a new R$ 1-per-liter subsidy, which will add to the current R$ 1.12 one, valid until Sept 26, whenever the two overlap. Petrobras said it is waiting for the publication of the necessary acts to review diesel prices.Pump prices have been rising since the start of the conflict between the United States and Iran on Feb 28, according to ANP data. Gasoline is up 3.6% and averaged R$ 6.51 per liter in early September; S10 diesel rose 13%, to R$ 6.88. Ethanol moved the other way, down 14.7% to R$ 3.95, about 60% of the gasoline price.

R$ 0.63 per liter. That is how much Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, raised the average price it charges distributors for gasoline on Tuesday night (9), effective Thursday (10), according to UOL. Drivers should not feel it: the federal government cut fuel taxes by the same amount, so pump prices are expected to hold.The increase combines two changes: a direct rise of R$ 0.19 and the end of a R$ 0.44 discount the company had been giving distributors. The average sale price to distributors now stands at R$ 3.24 per liter. Passed on to consumers, the move would add R$ 31.50 to a 50-liter tank.How the math worksHere is the chain: Petrobras does not sell fuel directly to drivers. It sells to distributors, which supply gas stations, and every step adds taxes and margins to the final price. PIS and Cofins are federal charges collected on each liter, and the government cut them by R$ 0.63 on gasoline, offsetting the company's increase before it reaches the pump, according to Folha de S.Paulo.The end of the discount has a legal cause. Provisional Measure 1.358/2026, in force since May, allowed the government to fund a R$ 0.44 per liter support payment to fuel producers and importers; it expired on Wednesday (9), and Petrobras announced the discount was over, ND Mais reported. On diesel, the company said it is waiting for the new rules to be published before revising prices.On the same day, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva issued a decree and a provisional measure cutting R$ 0.63 of PIS/Cofins on gasoline and R$ 0.19 on hydrous ethanol, and allowing up to R$ 1.00 more in subsidies per liter of diesel. Folha puts the monthly cost at about R$ 7 billion, more than R$ 200 million a day in public money. The measures run from September 10 to October 9, just after the first round of Brazil's presidential election.With the cut, the remaining federal tax on gasoline falls to R$ 0.16 per liter, and ethanol's federal charge drops to zero. On diesel, added to a R$ 1.12 subsidy already in place until September 26, government support could reach R$ 2.12 per liter by that date. If oil stays expensive because of the conflict between the United States and Iran, holding prices steady will cost the Treasury ever more.

80.4% of Brazilian households were in debt, the highest share on record, according to data from CNC, Brazil's national confederation of commerce and services, reported by G1 in April. Picture a street with ten houses: eight would be juggling bills beyond their budget, from credit cards to installment plans. That backdrop is what pushed Brazil's central bank, the Banco Central, to prepare rules against abuses in how lenders sell digital credit, according to Folha de S.Paulo.The rules are still being drafted and should be released in the coming months, people close to the talks told Folha. The central bank declined to comment when contacted. One target is high-value pre-approved loan offers, displayed in bright colors on the home screen of banking apps.What it means: a pre-approved loan is an offer the bank has already evaluated before the customer asks for anything. It is not money in your account; it is an invitation that can become debt in a few taps, with interest and fees that are not always read. The central bank is weighing what limits and conditions such offers should follow.The package is also expected to create specific protections for vulnerable consumers, according to people familiar with the discussions. The definition goes beyond low income: it includes users with little digital or financial familiarity, who are more likely to accept offers without understanding the interest and fee clauses.App design is another concern. Central bank technicians found that the flow of screens can push users into mistakes through speed or aggressive layout, even when the bank claims to comply with transparency rules. Another distortion flagged is advertising for betting platforms inside banking apps, seen as inconsistent because current rules require banks to look after customers' financial health.A crackdown already under wayThe new rules add to measures on risk recognition and capital requirements announced last week for credit cards and non-payroll personal loans, the most expensive credit lines for customers. According to Folha, the central bank is considering changes to the FPR (Risk Weight Factor), the multiplier that determines how much of a bank's own capital must be set aside per real lent. It works like a bank having to set aside more of its own money for every loan, which tends to make credit costlier or reduce how much is offered.Minutes of the Comef, the central bank's Financial Stability Committee, released on September 2, said specific measures for the credit market are being prepared, without dates. A day earlier, the central bank's supervision director, Ailton de Aquino, said the measures would come soon to fight household debt and called for a "macroprudential" view, "especially in the most expensive lines".

Brazil's federal government released R$ 6.6 billion (about US$ 1.3 billion) on Wednesday to keep fuel prices from rising, according to CNN Brasil. The money was unlocked through a provisional measure, an act that takes effect immediately but must later be approved by Congress, and was published in the official gazette. In practice, it pays fuel producers and importers so that oil, back at US$ 100 a barrel, does not reach the pump.Of the total, R$ 5.6 billion goes to road diesel, with a subsidy of R$ 1.12 per liter sold, and R$ 998 million covers other oil derivatives. On a truck's 200-liter tank, the subsidy adds up to R$ 224. The package is more than four times the R$ 1.6 billion the same government has set aside for 2027 to raise the revenue cap for micro-entrepreneurs under the MEI regime, according to O Globo.How it works: the "subvenção econômica" is a payment the government makes to producers and importers so they pass less of the cost increase on to consumers. The "extraordinary credit" authorizes this spending outside the regular budget. The provisional measure, known in Brazil as medida provisória, has the force of law from day one but expires unless Congress approves it.Why nowBrent, the global oil benchmark, rose 2.3% on Wednesday morning and briefly touched US$ 100 a barrel for the first time since July. Oil is up more than 60% this year. A barrel that cost US$ 72 in June, when the United States and Iran were talking about a deal, now costs about 40% more.The cause is the war between the United States and Iran. On Tuesday, US forces struck four Iranian tankers in the Gulf of Oman and one near Kharg Island, and the Houthis, Tehran's allies, hit oil installations in Saudi Arabia, leaving dozens of civilians wounded, according to CNN Brasil. The surge has already raised prices of derivatives from gasoline to diesel and put inflation back on central banks' radar. "The combination of expensive diesel, jet fuel, marine fuel and natural gas is particularly uncomfortable for consumers around the world, who see their disposable income shrink," said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank.Gasoline and the public accountsThe response goes beyond diesel. According to O Globo, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was set to sign a decree on Wednesday cutting taxes on gasoline, to stop the oil surge from reaching pump prices, with the presidential election weeks away.On the fiscal side, the R$ 6.6 billion does not count toward the spending limit of the fiscal framework, the rule that caps the growth of public expenses, and stays out of the primary result target, the surplus the government needs to service debt interest. For 2026, the target is a primary surplus of 0.25% of GDP. In short, the subsidy is paid, but it stays off the books used to measure this year's fiscal goal.

$100.94 was the price of Brent crude, the world's oil benchmark, shortly before 9 a.m. on Wednesday (9), up 3.08%, according to G1, the news portal of Brazil's Globo group. It was the first time oil climbed back above three digits since May 25. The level matters for household budgets: G1 projects that the rally will push energy costs higher and pressure global inflation, which keeps fuel expensive and interest rates elevated for longer.Since a barrel holds 159 liters (about 42 gallons), at $100.94 the raw oil costs more than 63 cents a liter before refining, shipping and taxes. West Texas Intermediate, the grade used as the benchmark in the United States, rose 2.79% to $95.63 at the same time. The newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reports that the day's peak came at 6:45 a.m., when Brent touched $100.95, its highest since May 22, when it cost $102.77.Why prices jumpedThe war between the United States and Iran is now six months old and took two escalatory turns this week. According to G1, attacks by the Houthis, an Iran-backed group, hit Saudi energy installations and set fire to structures tied to oil production; Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry said facilities in the south had suspended operations and that "the competent authorities are dealing with the repercussions of the attacks". On Tuesday (8), the United States destroyed five Iranian tankers linked to the Revolutionary Guard, and Iran answered on Wednesday saying it had attacked ten ships and fired ballistic missiles at a U.S. base in Jordan, Folha reports.In short: the Strait of Hormuz is the narrow channel between Iran and Oman that carried about 20% of the oil traded worldwide before the war. In the week ending August 30, between 8 million and 9 million barrels a day crossed the strait, double the previous week, according to Rystad Energy chief economist Claudio Galimberti, in figures released by Reuters. That flow has now fallen to fewer than 2 million barrels a day, less than a quarter of the volume of two weeks ago, and Houthi attacks also threaten shipments through the Red Sea, which had become an alternative route to the strait.What it means for walletsMajor banks have already reacted: Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and HSBC raised their oil price forecasts, according to G1. The International Energy Agency (IEA), which groups oil-consuming countries, expects global supply to fall by 4.3 million barrels a day this year, about 4% of the total, even as the United States, Canada and Guyana pump more. Less oil for sale and higher prices feed inflation, which can push central banks to hold or raise interest rates, making credit and monthly payments more expensive in many countries."The $100 level is a psychological threshold that carries weight in the markets. Once it is broken, many central banks will have no option but to raise interest rates to control inflation", said Kathleen Brooks, an analyst at brokerage XTB.U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised more retaliation: "Iran keeps trying to attack U.S. Navy ships, and every time they do it or try to do it, they will lose tankers", he said, according to Folha, during a visit to Colombia. A Houthi military spokesperson said the group will announce a broad operation inside Saudi territory, according to G1. Both warnings point to continued escalation.

The Brazilian real strengthened against the dollar on Tuesday (8), with the US currency closing at R$ 5.089, down 0.79%, its lowest closing level since August 7. In plain terms, US$ 100 cost R$ 508.90 at the end of trading. Given the 7.28% drop accumulated this year, tracked by state news agency Agência Brasil, that same purchase cost about R$ 40 more at the start of 2026.The stock market moved the other way: the Ibovespa, the benchmark index of the B3 exchange in São Paulo, rose 1.20% to 187,366 points, its highest close since May 4. Trading volume reached R$ 29.76 billion. Shares of Petrobras, the most traded in the index, gained 2.08% (preferred) and 2.36% (common), lifted by oil prices abroad.Abroad, Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, closed at US$ 97.92 (+0.9%), and WTI, the US reference, at US$ 93.03 (+1.7%). According to Agência Brasil, prices rose after attacks on cities in southern Saudi Arabia and on energy facilities amid tensions in the Persian Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world's oil supply passed before the conflict escalated, remains a central concern.Why polls move the exchange rateThe spot dollar is the price, in reais, of a dollar delivered immediately, and it swings with investor bets on interest rates, inflation and public finances, issues that change with the winner of the October presidential race. That is why traders watch voter intention polls. On Tuesday, InfoMoney linked the currency's decline to the rise of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro in the polls, while G1 listed the electoral outlook and oil among the day's drivers.Surveys released in recent days showed Flávio, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, numerically ahead of President Lula in second-round scenarios, including a BTG/Nexus poll that put the race at 46% to 45%. In September, the dollar has already fallen 1.82% over five sessions, after rising 2.16% in August. Foreign investors keep buying Brazilian stocks: net inflows totaled R$ 3.9 billion in the month's first three sessions, according to B3 data.For household budgets, a cheaper dollar eases the cost of imported goods, from electronics to wheat and fertilizers. Pricier oil pulls the other way: contracts pared their gains during the day on fears that more expensive fuel could weigh on inflation and global growth, Agência Brasil reported. The currency traded between R$ 5.1289 and R$ 5.0713 through the session.

More than R$ 1 billion in fraudulent claims for reimbursement of salário-maternidade, the maternity benefit paid by INSS, Brazil's social security institute, were blocked by the Receita Federal, Folha de S.Paulo and G1 reported on Tuesday (8). The requests came from shell companies and other organizations. In practice, the tax authority's operation kept the money from leaving public coffers.The agency's data analysis found a pattern incompatible with the benefit's rules. Red flags included companies with a single employee, revenue near zero and no matching records in their tax documents. Claims for amounts considered out of the ordinary also weighed in.Among the cases identified were claims filed in the name of insured women with no children registered to them, and business owners listed at the same time as owners and employees of their own companies. There were also situations in which the same person allegedly received several benefits through different companies within a short period. According to G1, several of the companies were linked to legal representatives who acted for dozens of others in a similar situation.One case stands out for its size: a MEI (microempreendedor individual, Brazil's sole-trader microentrepreneur category) in the rapid delivery sector claimed R$ 500,000 in reimbursement. Since the benefit lasts 120 days, about four months of pay, earning that much would require income of R$ 125,000 a month. According to the Receita, the law does not allow this kind of compensation for the category.How the scheme worksThe salário-maternidade is paid by INSS on the birth of a child, adoption, spontaneous or legal abortion and stillbirth, to those who contribute to social security as freelancers, individual contributors or MEIs, provided they prove minimum payments. It lasts 120 days, is granted to same-sex couples and, in cases set by law, can also go to men, such as adoption or the death of the mother during childbirth.The reimbursement at the center of the fraud works like this: when a company advances the benefit payment to an employee, it can ask the tax authority to offset that amount. When INSS pays the benefit directly to the insured person, the company cannot claim the money back through the refund systems. That was the route used by the shell companies, which together sought the equivalent of 2,000 claims the size of the courier's.Fraud attempts against the benefit have continued for more than two years. According to Folha, the scams grew after 2024, when the STF, Brazil's Supreme Court, changed the eligibility rule. The Receita also cited people and companies selling supposed tax solutions that promised fast credits or refunds, and advised citizens to know their rights before asking the government for money.

Financial market economists cut their 2026 inflation forecast for Brazil to 5%, from 5.01% the week before, in the Focus survey released on Tuesday (8) by the Central Bank. In everyday terms, the grocery cart that costs 100 reais today is expected to cost about 105 by the end of the year. The estimate tracks the IPCA, the index that measures Brazil's official inflation.The number still sits above the government's commitment. The inflation target, set by the National Monetary Council, is 3%, with a ceiling of 4.5% and a floor of 1.5%. For 2027, the forecast edged up from 4.28% to 4.29%.GDP and interest ratesIn the same survey, the growth estimate for the Brazilian economy in 2026 rose from 1.92% to 1.93%. According to InfoMoney, it was the first upward revision in more than two months. The pace is modest next to the 2.3% expansion of 2025, the fifth straight year of growth.In brief: the Focus bulletin is a weekly Central Bank survey of more than 100 financial institutions, from banks to consultancies. The published figures are the median of their forecasts for inflation, interest rates, GDP and the exchange rate. The bank uses it to track market expectations.Brazil's benchmark interest rate, the Selic, stands at 14% a year after four straight cuts by the Copom, the Central Bank committee that sets rates. Until March, it sat at 15%, the highest level in nearly 20 years. Markets expect it to fall to 13.75% by the end of this year and to 12% in 2027; in the meantime, loans, financing and installment plans stay expensive.The next test comes on Friday (11), when the IBGE, Brazil's statistics agency, releases August inflation. In July, prices were up 4.44% over 12 months, back inside the official target band. The market also expects the dollar to end the year at 5.20 reais.

The interest rate on payroll-deductible loans for Brazilian retirees and pensioners stays capped at 1.85% a month, and the power to set that ceiling remains with the INSS, the government institute that pays Brazil's social security benefits. The Supreme Federal Court (STF) ruled unanimously, in a virtual session that ended on August 28, that the institute can keep limiting rates on this type of credit. In practical terms, nothing changes in retirees' pockets for now: the court only confirmed who is allowed to move the cap.The ruling closed ADI 7759, a constitutional challenge filed in 2024 by the ABBC, an association of Brazilian banks. The suit targeted part of article 6 of law 10.820 of 2003, which created the payroll loan and lets the INSS, after hearing the National Social Security Council (CNPS), set a rate ceiling. The banks wanted rates to be set by the National Monetary Council (CMN), the body that regulates Brazil's financial system, and argued the rule violated the principles of legality, free enterprise and free competition.The winning opinion came from the case's rapporteur, Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, and the other justices followed him. In the vote, as summarized by the court's press office, the rate cap stands as a "mechanism to protect the vulnerable consumer", not arbitrary interference in business. He also rejected the claim that a complementary law was required and the alleged violation of free enterprise, since the rule does not ban banks from lending or grant exclusivity to any single player.How it works: the consignado is a loan repaid through installments automatically deducted from the borrower's pension or retirement check before the money reaches the account. Because default risk is close to zero, it carries the lowest rates in the Brazilian market: at the current cap, a balance of R$ 1,000 generates R$ 18.50 in interest per month. The payroll credit card has a ceiling of 2.46% a month, and recipients of the BPC, an assistance benefit of up to one minimum wage, are also eligible, according to Folha.How the fight startedThe association sued in 2024, after Carlos Lupi, then the social security minister, began cutting the cap every time the Selic, Brazil's benchmark interest rate, fell, Folha reports. At the time, banks briefly stopped offering the loans, and President Lula had to step in over the decision.With the ruling, the INSS, after consulting the CNPS, keeps the power to review the ceilings, now at 1.85% a month for the loan and 2.46% for the card. The 0.61 percentage point gap between the two limits equals R$ 61 a month on a R$ 10,000 balance. The decision ends, for now, the banks' judicial attempt to hand rate control to the CMN.

One in three Brazilians (33%) says their family income did not grow at all over the past year, according to a Quaest poll released on Monday (Sept. 7). In practical terms, for one in three households the money coming in is the same as twelve months ago, while prices on the shelves kept rising. Combined, those who saw no income growth (33%) and those who saw income rise less than the cost of living (21%) add up to 54% of respondents: more than half the country says their salary buys less than it did a year ago.The question was blunt: "Thinking about what your family earns and the rise in prices over the past year, you would say that...". Another 33% said income and the cost of living rose at the same pace, and only 10% said income grew faster than prices, meaning fewer than one in ten Brazilians feel their money stretches further than a year ago. The figures are identical to the previous round, from Sept. 2.How the poll was conductedQuaest, hired by Globo and the newspaper O Globo, interviewed 2,004 people aged 16 and older across Brazil between Sept. 3 and Sept. 6. The margin of error is two percentage points in either direction, with a 95% confidence level. The survey is registered with the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Brazil's top election authority, under number BR-01720/2026.Explained: the margin of error means each figure can swing two points up or down. If the poll shows 33%, the real value in the population sits between 31% and 35%, with 95% confidence. That is why one- or two-point differences between rounds do not signal a change.Income perception splits Lula and Flávio BolsonaroAnswers on family income separate the two leading candidates in Brazil's presidential race. Among those who say income grew faster than prices, President Lula of the Workers' Party (PT) has 76% of first-round voting intentions, against 11% for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), within a group that carries a 7-point margin of error. Among those who say income did not grow, Bolsonaro leads with 34% to Lula's 23%, with a 4-point margin.This was the first Quaest round after new details emerged in the Banco Master investigation involving Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, InfoMoney reports. In the full first-round scenario, without Pablo Marçal, Lula has 36% and Bolsonaro 29%. The daily Folha de S.Paulo and G1 also show the two tied at 41% each in a simulated runoff.

Brazil's listed companies spent R$ 99.4 billion (roughly US$ 19 billion) on financial expenses, the accounting term for interest and charges on debt, between April and June. That was 12% more than in the same quarter of 2025, an extra R$ 10.7 billion, according to a survey by the consultancy Elos Ayta commissioned by the newspaper O Globo. It works out to more than R$ 1 billion a day leaving company cash for creditors, instead of paying for expansion or hiring.The squeeze shows in the bottom line, what is left after interest and taxes: net profit rose only 3.9%, from R$ 48.9 billion to R$ 50.8 billion, across a sample of 268 companies on the B3, Brazil's stock exchange (Petrobras, Casas Bahia and the banks were left out). Operating profit, before that bill, had climbed almost 25%, to R$ 123.9 billion. O Globo reports that high rates pressure companies, limit profits and curb investment, a reading confirmed by UOL Economia in its review of earnings-season reports from five banks.In brief: the Selic is Brazil's benchmark interest rate, set by the Central Bank to contain inflation, and it currently sits at 14% a year. It is the floor for all credit in the country, from store installments to home loans. In practice, every R$ 1,000 of debt costs R$ 140 a year at that rate alone, before the bank's spread."Ebit profit (what companies earn before deducting interest on debt and taxes) rose almost 25%, totaling R$ 123.9 billion. But when you consider what companies paid in interest and taxes, an outlay of R$ 99.4 billion, net profit falls to R$ 50.8 billion. That is profit growth of just R$ 1.9 billion year over year," explains Einar Rivero, CEO of Elos Ayta.Companies trade debt for cashMany companies responded by paying down debt. According to an XP survey cited by O Globo, average leverage, measured as net debt over operating profit, fell from 1.7 to 1.4 over the last four quarters among 135 companies tracked by its analysts. The cost of skipping that homework shows within a single industry: the homebuilders Cury and Direcional earned R$ 311 million and R$ 202 million, while MRV&CO paid R$ 393.2 million in net financial expenses, 60% more than a year earlier, and posted a loss of R$ 626 million.The outliersTwo cases were left out of the sample so they would not distort the average. The retailer Casas Bahia booked an accounting loss of R$ 10.1 billion, closed 298 stores and filed for judicial recovery, a court-supervised process in Brazil that lets a company renegotiate debts to avoid bankruptcy, with R$ 17.3 billion to restructure. In its petition, the company said it had been "impacted by the challenging macroeconomic environment, marked by elevated interest rates, credit restriction, higher financial costs and pressure on consumption and working capital."Petrobras was excluded for the opposite reason: it earned R$ 52.4 billion, up 96.8% from the second quarter of last year, lifted by oil prices that have risen amid tensions between Iran and the United States. Strip out those extremes, and the quarter shows companies that sell more but watch most of the extra gain go to interest and taxes.

The price of Brent crude, the world's main oil benchmark, passed $97 a barrel on Monday (7), its highest level in almost seven weeks, according to Folha de S.Paulo. For drivers, the bill usually arrives later: a more expensive barrel pushes up gasoline, diesel and airfares. The jump follows new attacks by the United States and Iran on oil tankers and a refinery in the Gulf region.Around 9 a.m. Brasília time, Brent was up 1.28% at $97.49, after touching $97.94, its high of the day. WTI, the price benchmark used inside the United States, rose 0.99% to $92.37. Valor Econômico reported the same move, with Brent above $97 on supply risks in the Strait of Hormuz.A barrel holds 159 liters, so $97.49 works out to about $0.61 per liter of crude alone. Refining, transport and taxes come on top of that. The price at the pump, in other words, starts higher before any station changes its signs.Why the price roseOn Saturday (5), US forces attacked three Iranian tankers, according to the United States Central Command, the American military command for the Middle East. One of the ships was near Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export terminal. Folha identified the tankers as Downy, Stark I and Kylo, also known as Noxen.The American strikes came after actions by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's military arm, against US warships in the region. In retaliation, the Guard's navy said the same day it had attacked three tankers sailing unauthorized routes in the strait, plus three other US vessels in different areas. On Monday morning, facilities of the Saudi state company Saudi Aramco in Jizan were hit again.The Jizan refinery, one of Saudi Arabia's largest, processes 400,000 barrels a day. The Houthis, an Iran-aligned group in Yemen, had already attacked the plant in early August, and a person familiar with the episode told Folha that Monday's strike was of similar scale. Saudi Aramco did not respond to a request for comment, and the Houthis have not claimed the action so far.Explainer: the Strait of Hormuz is the narrow sea passage between Iran and Oman through which about one fifth of the oil consumed in the world moves. When fighting breaks out nearby, ships stop crossing out of fear of attack, supply shrinks and prices rise. Folha reported that traffic in the strait has fallen to its lowest level since May.For Brazilian consumers, expensive crude pressures gasoline and diesel prices, items with heavy weight in the IPCA, Brazil's official inflation index. US stock exchanges were closed on Monday for the Labor Day holiday, according to Exame, while Brazil was also on holiday for its Independence Day. The next market reference is expected on Tuesday (8), when US trading resumes.

For about six months, every Brazilian lawsuit over the payroll-deductible credit card has sat frozen. In practice, retirees, pensioners and civil servants who asked a court to cancel their contracts have waited half a year, the length of six benefit or salary payments. The freeze was ordered by the STJ (Superior Tribunal de Justiça), the court that sets precedents for Brazil's state courts, which now wants a single answer for the whole pile of cases.According to Folha de S.Paulo, the court's Second Section will weigh two questions: whether banks abused their position when issuing the cards, and whether canceling a contract should trigger an automatic moral damages award. The case runs as Tema (case theme) 1.414, reported by Justice Raul Araújo, and has no trial date yet. In a March statement, the STJ itself said the ruling will define "objective parameters" to judge the validity and possible abusive nature of these contracts.In brief: the payroll credit card is a card whose minimum bill is deducted straight from the holder's paycheck, civil servant salary or INSS benefit, Brazil's social security pension, within a cap called the consignable margin. Interest is usually lower than on ordinary cards because the bank is guaranteed payment. A "repetitive appeal" is the procedure in which the STJ tries one model case and the answer binds every similar case in the country.Why the docket is so crowdedThe number of suits has grown sharply, according to lawyers Carlos Antônio Harten and Renato Dowsley. Writing in Poder360, they say the courts have been "flooded" with claims arguing that information at signing was unclear, and that state courts issue diverging rulings on identical facts. The automatic damages question has its own docket number, Tema 1.328, tied to appeal REsp 2.145.244, from Santa Catarina state.In that southern case, the state court held that canceling a contract that was genuinely signed does not, by itself, create presumed moral damage. Presumed moral damage is the compensation paid automatically when a contract is voided, without the consumer having to prove suffering. Until the STJ rules, the suits stay frozen, and only the final enforcement of already-settled sentences proceeds, according to the Poder360 piece.The stakes cut both ways. If the court confirms automatic damages, banks could face serial condemnations in voided contracts; if it follows the Santa Catarina line, each consumer will have to prove harm case by case. The ruling will set the course for the cases waiting since March.

Brazil's federal debt reached 82.5% of GDP (the value of everything the country produces in a year) in July, its highest level since April 2021, according to Central Bank data cited by Poder360 and reported by O Globo and CNN Brasil. For household budgets, that means costlier credit: analysts heard by g1 say repeated deficits push up interest rates, which set the price of mortgage, car and credit card payments. Four weeks before the first round of the presidential election, the two poll leaders, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party, are offering rival plans for the public accounts.To picture the size of the debt, think of a family earning 5,000 reais a month, or 60,000 a year: it would owe 49,500 reais. Since the current government took office in 2023, the debt load has risen by 10.8 percentage points, about 6,500 reais of extra debt in that household comparison. A survey by Poder360 published on Sunday (Sept. 6) compares the two candidates' proposals, and economists heard by the site conclude that neither plan is enough to change the debt's path.What each candidate proposesLula wants to keep the fiscal framework, the rule that caps the growth of government spending, and balance the books from the revenue side, betting on economic growth, spending efficiency and more taxes. His program promises to maintain and expand social protection (the Bolsa Família stipend, the BPC income benefit, housing and the Pé-de-Meia savings program for students) and to raise public investment. Alexandre Schwartsman, a former Central Bank director, sums up the criticism by calling the package a "loose budget" with little concern for reining in expenses."The fiscal framework that was implemented, besides being insufficient, carries no consequences when it is broken. It is as if it did not exist", said Bruno Perri, chief economist and founding partner of Forum Investimentos.Flávio Bolsonaro goes the opposite way: a new fiscal rule, primary surpluses (collecting more than the government spends, before interest payments) and a sweeping cost-cutting drive Brazilians call a "tesouraço", with at least 10 ministries eliminated, fewer political appointee posts and a crackdown on "penduricalhos", the extra perks added to civil servants' pay. The plan would also resume privatizations and the administrative reform. According to Poder360, the document does not say how much would be saved, and it still promises to double public security investment and cut taxes, which adds doubts about whether the numbers add up.In plain terms: the gross debt is everything the federal government owes, and the fiscal framework is the rule designed to keep spending growth within a limit. In recent years the government opened room for spending outside that limit, weakening the rule's credibility. Perri adds another problem with Flávio's math: privatizations are one-off revenue, because assets are sold only once.Record revenue, rising debtThe squeeze coexists with record tax collection: the federal government expects to collect 3.24 trillion reais this year, 23.7% of GDP, the highest level in the Treasury's historical series, which began in 1997 and whose previous record was 2010 (23.6%), in Lula's own second term. In everyday terms, for every 100 reais of wealth produced in Brazil, 23.70 go to the federal coffers, against an average of 21.40 over the previous 29 years, according to g1. Even so, Rafaela Vitória, chief economist at the bank Inter, said 2026 should still end with a primary deficit near 0.5% of GDP, worse than 2025, while the proposed 2027 budget projects a surplus of just 18.6 billion reais, under 1% of annual revenue.

Workers at Caixa, Brazil's federal savings bank, rejected the bank's collective offer with 90% of the vote and approved a strike starting Thursday, September 10. The São Paulo bank workers' union released the results of the national assembly, which closed at 7 p.m. on Friday, September 4. For ordinary customers, it may mean reduced service at the bank that pays out FGTS, a mandatory severance fund, PIS wage supplements and federal social benefits.In Belo Horizonte, rejection reached 93.5%, and the strike motion won 68.2% of votes. The national confederation Contec recorded rejection above 90% in assemblies across the country and formalized an open-ended walkout from the 10th. The core dispute is Saúde Caixa, the health plan covering employees, retirees and dependents.Under the bank's offer, monthly premiums would cost between 2.7% and 4.5% of base pay depending on age, and each dependent would be charged between R$ 480 and R$ 660 per person. Contec says that in some cases the bill could rise by about 50% over current values. The family spending cap would grow from 7% to 9% of base pay, which by comparison equals R$ 450 a month for someone earning R$ 5,000.Other numbers also drove the rejection: the annual cap on copayments, the share of consultations and exams paid by beneficiaries, would rise from R$ 3,600 to R$ 4,800, a one-third jump. An emergency room visit would cost R$ 150. Contec says the plan runs a deficit of about R$ 410 million, projected to reach R$ 734 million in 2026, and that Caixa offered a R$ 536 million cash injection bundled with the same package that raises premiums.The confederation asked to pull the health plan out of the collective deal and negotiate it separately until year-end, but the bank kept its proposal. According to Contec, the changes arrived at the very end of talks, with no time to assess their impact. A few affiliated unions still vote on the offer on Tuesday, September 8.Explainer: workers at private banks are covered by the CCT, a national convention negotiated with Fenaban, the federation that speaks for the banks. Caixa and Banco do Brasil, both state-controlled, strike their own agreements, the ACTs, voted by workers in assembly. The INPC is the inflation index used as the benchmark in these talks; matching it only keeps salaries' purchasing power flat, with no real gain.BB and private banks seal agreementsPrivate bank workers approved the CCT renewal with 66.1% of valid votes after 13 rounds of talks with Fenaban. The deal grants INPC plus a real 0.6% raise in 2026 and 2027 on salaries, profit sharing and all other pay items. Signing is scheduled for September 9.By comparison, the 0.6% amounts to about R$ 30 a month on a R$ 5,000 salary. New clauses include the right to disconnect after hours, with no obligation to answer messages from clients or managers, and limits on digital monitoring at work.At Banco do Brasil, staff approved the ACT with 51.65% of valid votes. The package includes a R$ 3,000 payment for about 71,500 employees, tied to a collective target in the bank's 2026 debt-collection campaign and expected after fourth-quarter results, plus a R$ 360 million advance to the Cassi health plan.The BB vote was close. In Belo Horizonte, 81% of the bank's staff rejected the offer, and the strike option beat a return to talks without a walkout by 47.1% to 43.9%. The national tally, however, sealed the agreement.What happens before the 10thContec formally notified Caixa of the strike under Law 7,783 of 1989, Brazil's strike law, which requires advance notice to the employer. The São Paulo union will formally notify the bank of the assembly's decision on Tuesday, September 8. Without a new offer, the walkout starts Thursday with no end date."Contec, under the Strike Law and in view of the rejection of the employer's proposal by the general assemblies, announces a strike of Caixa employees starting September 10, 2026, for an indefinite period," said the confederation's president, Lourenço Prado.Prado said negotiations remain open. "We remain at Caixa's disposal for new talks and to build a proposal that can stop the walkout," he said in a statement. The agreement in dispute covers the 2026/2028 cycle.

The number that matters is R$ 3.24 trillion: that is how much Brazil's federal government expects to collect in 2026, an all-time high. The simplest way to grasp it: of every 100 reais of wealth produced in the country this year, 23.70 reais should go to federal coffers. On average, that works out to about 270 billion reais flowing in every month.If confirmed, the 23.7% of GDP mark (GDP is the total value of goods and services produced in a year) would be the highest in the National Treasury's historical series, which began in 1997, according to news site G1. The previous record dates from 2010, the final year of President Lula's second term, at 23.6% of GDP, while the average between 1997 and 2025 was 21.4%. The estimate appears in the 2027 budget bill sent to Congress this week, which projects a slight drop to 23.4% of GDP next year (R$ 3.46 trillion) and a primary surplus, meaning accounts in the black before interest payments on debt, of R$ 18.6 billion.What counts as revenueIn short: total revenue covers federal taxes and other income, such as oil royalties, concessions and dividends from state-controlled companies, and excludes states and municipalities. It should not be confused with Brazil's overall tax burden, which adds state and city taxes and reached 32.1% of GDP in 2024, according to the federal tax authority.Part of the explanation lies in the string of tax increases approved under Lula's third term: the IOF levy on loans and currency transactions, taxes on offshore wealth, the gradual return of payroll taxes, import duties on more than a thousand products and taxation of sports betting, among other measures listed in the budget. "The reversal of the deterioration of the federal revenue base has been a major challenge, although some progress can already be detected," the document says. In exchange, the government widened income tax exemption for those earning up to 5,000 reais a month, a change that takes effect with the 2027 tax return.Oil is also helping set the record. The government expects to collect R$ 172.1 billion from oil production in 2026, about 33 billion reais more than the R$ 139.3 billion of 2025, driven by higher global barrel prices amid the war in the Middle East, according to G1. All of this with a slower economy: GDP grew 0.5% in the second quarter, below the 1.1% recorded from January to March.Record revenue, red inkFor Rafaela Vitória, chief economist at Banco Inter, taxes and oil are sustaining collection even as activity loses steam. She cautions, however, that the bigger inflow still does not balance the books. A primary deficit means the government spends more than it collects, before counting interest on its debt.The government has a strong rise in revenue this year and will still generate a primary deficit of close to 0.5% of GDP, a result that should be worse than in 2025.Rafael Barros Barbosa, a researcher at Brazilian think tank FGV IBRE, notes that spending has grown sharply in Lula's third term, boosted by the transition constitutional amendment, which added about R$ 170 billion to annual outlays. According to SpaceMoney, public debt reached 82.5% of GDP in August, its highest level since April 2021. Analysts cited by G1 say the mismatch between spending and revenue is what pressures interest rates and the rise of indebtedness.

Nearly 2 million Brazilians worked through service apps in 2025, according to figures released on Friday by the IBGE, Brazil's national statistics institute. Their average monthly pay is almost identical to that of other private sector workers, but they work longer weeks and each hour pays 12% less. In practice, a driver or courier only reaches the same wage by working more hours for it.Of the total, 1.8 million relied on apps as their main job and 182,000 as a side income, according to news website G1. They account for 1.9% of Brazil's 102.4 million employed workers. The Southeast region concentrates 55.3% of them, about 1.08 million people.Ride-hailing is the biggest slice: 1.2 million people, or 58.9%, drive for passenger apps such as Uber and 99. Delivery apps come next, used by 29.9%, a group that ranges from couriers to people selling their own products. A smaller share, 313,000 people (16%), offers general or professional services through apps, from house cleaning to telemedicine, according to state news agency Agência Brasil.The group is growing fast. Counting only those who list apps as their main occupation, the only measure comparable with previous years, the number went from 1.3 million in 2022 to 1.8 million in 2025, a rise of 36.8% in three years and 9.1% in the past year. Even so, they are just 2% of private sector workers, though in transport, warehousing and postal services three out of every four workers already use apps.The context: the PNAD Contínua is Brazil's largest employment survey, carried out by the IBGE through household interviews. A platform worker is someone who provides a service through an app that connects worker and client, and that app can set prices, assign clients, deadlines and even working hours, as G1 explains. In this survey, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Marketplace do not count as platforms, and the series is still experimental, so the IBGE warns the 2 million total cannot be compared with the 2022 and 2024 editions.Same pay, longer hoursAverage monthly income from app work was R$ 3,147 in 2025, virtually the same as the R$ 3,148 of other private sector workers and slightly above two monthly minimum wages. The gap shows up in hours: 44.7 per week, against 39.3 for the others, according to G1. That is 5.4 extra hours a week, close to 24 extra hours a month, nearly three full workdays.Per hour, app work paid R$ 16.20, compared with R$ 18.40 for other workers, a 12% discount. According to Agência Brasil, the figures represent what is left after costs such as fuel and car maintenance. From 2022 to 2025, platform workers' income moved just 1%, while other workers gained 10.6%.Who they are, and whyMost app workers are men (84.4%) and 47% are between 25 and 39 years old. Nearly 9 in 10 (86.8%) are self-employed, only 4.5% hold a formal contract, and informality, meaning no signed work card or business registration, reaches 72.1%, nearly double the rate of other workers (42.7%). Only 34% contribute to social security, against 63% of non-platform workers.The most cited reasons for working through apps were schedule flexibility (26.8%), not finding another job (24.6%) and better pay than the alternatives (20.8%). Among ride-hailing drivers and couriers specifically, failing to find other work was the top reason. Dependence runs deep: 62.7% work exclusively through platforms, and 38.8%, or 701,000 people, nearly 4 in 10, rely on a single app.The IBGE itself summed up the two sides of the picture, through analyst Gustavo Geaquinto Fontes."Platforms have offered income opportunities for many workers and have allowed companies to reach new markets and cut costs. On the other hand, they pose a major challenge for working conditions," said Fontes.

Less than 0.001% of the assets of Brazil's financial system. That is the combined weight of Trustee and Banvox, two brokerages tied to a former partner of Banco Master that Brazil's Central Bank ordered shut on Thursday, September 3, through a process called extrajudicial liquidation. For the rest of the system, the effect is negligible: the central bank itself described the firms' footprint as very small, and said in a statement that the move answered to "serious violations of legal norms".Both firms are based in São Paulo and linked to Maurício Quadrado, a former partner in Banco Master, a bank the central bank had already pushed into extrajudicial liquidation in November 2025, according to Folha. G1 reports that after Quadrado split with Daniel Vorcaro, the bank's controller, who was arrested in a probe into alleged fraud and still faces the cases, Quadrado took control of Trustee, which had provided services to the bank. Banvox, founded in 1984 and also tied to Quadrado, has focused since 2016 on administering and holding custody of its own funds.In July, the two firms together accounted for less than R$1 of every R$100,000 in financial system assets, and for about R$0.76 of every R$100 in third-party funds under administration in the country, according to the central bank. It is the equivalent of a corner shop inside a giant mall. Per InfoMoney, the two houses are part of a conglomerate in segment S4, the tier of prudential regulation reserved for smaller groups.How the measure worksExplainer: extrajudicial liquidation lets the Central Bank wind down a financial institution without a court order when it finds serious irregularities; a liquidator appointed by the authority takes over the firm, sells its assets and pays creditors in the order set by law. DTVM, the acronym in both firms' names, stands for "distribuidora de títulos e valores mobiliários", the formal term for a brokerage that trades investments for clients.Who signed it and what comes nextThe order was signed by Ailton de Aquino, the supervision director standing in as central bank president while Gabriel Galípolo travels to Basel, Switzerland, according to InfoMoney. The appointed liquidator is Marilena Simões Valentim. Assets of the firms' controllers and former executives have been frozen since Thursday, and the central bank said it will keep investigating, which may lead to administrative sanctions and referrals to other authorities.The measure adds to investigations already under way. G1 reports that Banvox administered at least one fund named in Operação Carbono Oculto, a Federal Police inquiry into alleged money laundering and suspected ties to organized crime. An internal survey by the CVM, Brazil's securities regulator, revealed by O Globo columnist Malu Gaspar, counted 126 administrative proceedings against Banco Master, the asset manager Reag and Trustee as of February, the oldest opened in 2017.

Brazil's benchmark stock index, the Ibovespa, rose 3% on Wednesday (Sept 2), and the dollar closed sharply lower, at 5.10 reais. Anyone holding 1,000 reais in a fund that tracks the index saw the balance grow by roughly 30 reais in a single session. The driver was political: a poll released that day put President Lula and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in a statistical tie, within the margin of error, in a likely runoff.According to news site g1, the Quaest survey, commissioned by broadcaster Globo and newspaper O Globo, shows Lula with 37% of voter intentions in the first round, slightly more than one voter in three, against 29% for Flavio Bolsonaro. Writer Augusto Cury ranks third with 10%. In a simulated runoff, Lula has 42% against Bolsonaro's 41%, a statistical tie because the margin of error is two percentage points; the gap was three points in mid-August.It was the Ibovespa's 11th straight gain, closing at its highest level since May, as state news agency Agencia Brasil reported. CNN Brasil put the rise at 3% and Bloomberg Linea at 3.1%. The dollar fell 0.91%, to 5.10 reais, nearly 5 centavos lower.In everyday terms, a drop of nearly 5 centavos saves about 47 reais on a 1,000-dollar purchase, the size of a typical travel budget. Among stocks, state-controlled Banco do Brasil rose almost 6%, lifted by the poll and by a new payout of JCP (juros sobre capital proprio, a Brazilian dividend-like distribution of profits to shareholders), according to InfoMoney.Why a poll moves pricesIn brief: Brazilian markets use the term "electoral trade" for buying and selling driven by each candidate's chances of winning October's election. When a survey shows a tighter race, investors pay more for shares of companies seen as benefiting from a change of government and step back from assets tied to the current one. Because the outcome is unknown, the bet can reverse within days if the next poll tells a different story.The financial daily Valor Economico described "euphoria" on the exchange, with traders betting on a change of power, but noted the market is not yet pricing a 50/50 election. The newspaper Estadao says new polls, including Datafolha, will test the strength of the so-called electoral trade on Thursday (Sept 3). The first round of voting is about a month away, according to g1.

38% of Brazilian voters say they plan to vote for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is running for reelection, in the October 4 first round, according to a Real Time Big Data poll released on Tuesday, September 1. For voters still weighing their choice, the figure means Lula leads comfortably and remains far from the majority of valid votes that would hand him victory in a single round. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) follows with 29%, and writer Augusto Cury (Avante) has 10%.The president's lead over Flávio is 9 points. Across the 2,000 people interviewed, that equals roughly 180 more respondents choosing the incumbent. In the prompted survey, in which candidates' names are read to voters, Renan Santos (Missão) also appears with 6%, former governor Ronaldo Caiado (PSD) with 4%, Pablo Marçal (PRTB) with 3% and former governor Romeu Zema (Novo) with 2%, CNN Brasil reported.A second scenario removes Marçal, currently barred from running by a decision of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Brazil's top election authority, according to InfoMoney. Little changes: Lula repeats 38%, Flávio rises one point to 30% and Cury reaches 11%. Blank and spoiled ballots and undecided voters account for 3% each.A tie in the runoffThe race turns when a single rival is left: Lula and Flávio tie at 44% of voting intentions in a possible runoff, a result close to a coin toss. On July 21, the same institute had Lula at 45% and the Liberal Party candidate at 42%. The poll did not test a runoff between Lula and Cury.In another scenario, Caiado reaches 45% against Lula's 43%, a gap inside the margin of error. Against Zema, Renan Santos and Marçal, the president leads by 43% to 40%, 44% to 37% and 44% to 40%, respectively. InfoMoney reads the scenarios as a gain for the Liberal Party candidacy since the July survey.Explainer: every poll carries a margin of error, here two percentage points up or down. Across 2,000 interviews, two points equal about 40 people, and gaps that small cannot declare a winner, a situation pollsters call a statistical tie. That is why Caiado's 45% to 43% edge over Lula gives him no lead.Matching rejection, poor marks for the governmentLula and Flávio share the same rejection rate: 50%, the equivalent of one in every two voters saying they would not vote for either man. Cury posts the lowest figure on the list, 28%. On the government, 51% disapprove of the president's performance and 45% approve.Real Time Big Data interviewed 2,000 voters nationwide between August 27 and 31. The margin of error is two percentage points, with a 95% confidence level, and the poll is registered with the TSE under number BR-03490/2026. CNN Brasil reported the survey was commissioned by the institute itself.

Brazil's economy grew 0.5% in the second quarter of 2026, the federal statistics agency IBGE reported on Tuesday (Sept. 1). That is less than half the pace of the first quarter, when growth reached 1.1%. The country is still expanding, but the engine closest to people's wallets, household consumption, moved backwards: spending fell 0.4%.For perspective, a 0.4% drop for a household that spends R$ 3,000 a month means cutting about R$ 12 from the budget. The decline followed a 0.8% rise in the first quarter and matches the script analysts expected with money this expensive: according to Folha de S.Paulo, economists had anticipated the slowdown because of high interest rates.In short: GDP (Gross Domestic Product) adds up the value of all the goods and services a country produces in a period, from bakery bread to streaming subscriptions. In the quarter, that output totaled R$ 3.4 trillion in current values, IBGE says. Compared with the same quarter of 2025, growth was 2%.What grew and what stalledThe farm sector carried the quarter. Agriculture rose 2.8%, the best performance among the major sectors, with annual gains in soybeans (up 5.3%) and coffee (up 15.1%). Services, which include retail, transport and restaurants, grew just 0.2%, and industry 0.1%.Within industry, oil and gas extraction rose 3.4%, while manufacturing fell 0.4%. Because IBGE does not seasonally adjust the data crop by crop, it is not possible to say precisely how much each commodity contributed to the quarter's 2.8% farm growth, said the agency's national accounts coordinator, Ricardo Montes de Moraes.High rates and an election yearThe cost of money is the main brake. The Selic, the benchmark interest rate set by Brazil's central bank, fell from 15% to 14% a year between March and August after four straight cuts of 0.25 percentage point, but it remains in double digits: a R$ 1,000 loan accrues more than R$ 140 in interest over a year at the basic rate alone. Folha also points to household debt as an extra drag on consumption.There are positives: government consumption rose 0.4% and investment grew 1.2%, while exports fell 0.8% and imports rose 1.8%. The 0.5% reading came slightly above the market's median forecast of 0.4%, according to Bloomberg. For the full year, the central bank's Focus survey projects 1.92% GDP growth, and the labor market remained strong in the quarter, Folha reports.Tuesday's release is the last GDP report before October's presidential election, and third-quarter data will only arrive on December 2. President Lula (Workers' Party), who is running for reelection, has leaned on stimulus measures in recent months. The bill for tight money, though, already shows up in the number that most directly hits daily life: how much families can afford to buy.

Brazil's government has set aside R$ 97.9 billion for six subsidized credit lines in 2027, according to the budget bill sent to Congress on Monday (Aug. 31). In practice, that is money for loans at rates below what banks charge, from the cheapest credit available to targeted groups. The taxpayer picks up the difference in the end: if the funds are fully lent out, the cost can reach R$ 20.5 billion, paid through a larger public debt over the life of the contracts, according to Folha de S.Paulo.To grasp the scale, that is more than twice the R$ 44.8 billion reserved for congressional amendments, the local projects lawmakers choose, in the same proposal. On average, each real lent carries about 20 cents of subsidy over the life of the contract. The subsidized lines grew during President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's third term and became a showcase of his administration; in an election year they reached new groups, such as cars for taxi and ride-hailing drivers and motorcycles for delivery workers.How it works: the cost comes from what is known as the implicit subsidy, the gap between the rate the Treasury pays to borrow in the market and the lower rate it receives when lending the money to the programs. The calculation entered the PLOA, Brazil's annual budget bill, through a first-of-its-kind annex created after criticism from experts and the TCU, the federal audit court, over the lack of transparency around such spending.At the presentation of the proposal, Planning Minister Bruno Moretti explained the mechanism:"When you lend that money at a rate below the one at which others finance themselves, that creates an implicit subsidy. We are showing the impact across the main areas with financial spending, and the implicit subsidy projected for each of them."A cost outside the fiscal targetExperts criticize the model as a way around Brazil's fiscal rules: because the transfers count as financial expenses, they enter neither the spending limit of the fiscal framework nor the primary result, the balance between government revenue and spending excluding interest payments. The R$ 20.5 billion equals almost 12 million monthly minimum wages; the same budget sets the 2027 floor at R$ 1,741.The proposal also projects a primary surplus of R$ 18.6 billion for 2027, according to InfoMoney. Since the implicit subsidy sits outside that measure, its cost shows up only in public debt. The bill now goes to Congress, which can change the figures before passing the budget law.

R$ 636 billion: that is how much Brazil's federal government expects to collect in 2027 from the CBS (Contribution on Goods and Services), the new federal consumption tax that replaces PIS, Cofins and part of the IPI starting in January. Like any consumption tax, the money comes out of shoppers' pockets, built into prices. Spread over the year, it averages roughly R$ 20,000 per second.The estimate is in the 2027 annual budget bill sent to Congress on Monday (Aug 31), according to news outlet G1. Adding the Selective Tax, the so-called "sin tax" that will cover cigarettes, alcoholic drinks, sugary drinks and betting, the new taxes created by Brazil's consumption tax overhaul are projected to raise R$ 677.9 billion next year, reports Folha de S.Paulo. The CBS alone is more than 15 times the R$ 41.9 billion expected from the sin tax and 14 times the R$ 44.8 billion the same budget sets aside for congressional earmarks.The overhaul, approved by Congress in 2023, swaps five old taxes for a dual value-added system: the federal CBS plus the IBS for states and cities, which phases in through 2033. PIS and Cofins, two federal taxes currently charged on companies' revenue and among those that generate the most lawsuits in Brazil, will be abolished at the end of this year, G1 reports. The IPI, a federal tax on manufactured goods, survives only for products made in the Manaus Free Trade Zone.What the CBS isThe CBS is a value-added tax (VAT), the model used across most of the world: it is charged at each stage of production, but companies deduct the tax paid in earlier stages. In G1's example, with a 20% rate, a product sold to the final consumer for R$ 100 carries R$ 20 in tax across the whole chain. The change for shoppers is that the tax will be shown separately on receipts, no longer hidden inside the price.Rate only in DecemberThe budget lists the amounts to be collected, but not the CBS rate. Under the reform's calendar, the Federal Revenue Service has until September 14 to send its calculation proposal to the TCU, the federal audit court; the court has until October 30 to certify the numbers, and the Senate must set the CBS reference rate by December 15. "It is not the Finance Ministry's job to set the rate", Finance Minister Dario Durigan told Folha.On the size of the new taxes, the committee managing the new system, the CGIBS, estimated in August that the CBS, the IBS and the Selective Tax combined will reach about 28% in 2033, the first year of full collection. That means R$ 28 in tax for every R$ 100 purchased, above the 19.4% average of OECD countries. The government counters that taxes on consumption already total about 34% today, and G1 notes that high consumption taxes hit low-income families hardest, since they spend a larger share of their income on purchases.

R$ 18.6 billion: that is the surplus Brazil's federal government projects for its own accounts in 2027, the first positive balance after four straight years of deficits, under the budget proposal sent to Congress on Monday (Aug 31). For household budgets, the figure matters because spending more than it collects pressures interest rates and public debt, and high rates make credit and consumption more expensive, as G1 reports. The promise is modest: it equals 0.13% of GDP, a little over one cent for every R$ 10 the country produces in a year.The target is in the 2027 annual budget bill (PLOA), delivered to Congress on Monday. It is the last budget proposal of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's third term, which began in 2023, and it will cover the first year of the successor elected in October's presidential vote, though Congress and the next government can still change it. Presenting the bill, Planning and Budget Minister Bruno Moretti said he trusts the delivery of the "full result", the entire surplus:"We have full confidence that we can deliver this result in full. There is a smaller weight of mandatory expenses. We are not forecasting revenues that depend on congressional approval, because in other years we sent the budget bill along with other revenue measures. Here we are not counting on any new measure."A blue target with loopholes that allow redThe target accepts shortcuts, according to G1. There is a tolerance band of 0.25 percentage point of GDP up or down, and R$ 65.7 billion in precatórios, court-ordered debts the federal government must pay, plus defense, health and education projects can stay outside the spending limit. In practice, the government could close 2027 with a hole of up to R$ 29.1 billion, larger than the promised surplus itself, without formally missing the target.How it works: the indicator at stake is the primary result, the difference between what the government collects and what it spends, excluding interest payments on the debt. When more comes in than goes out, there is a primary surplus; when more goes out, there is a deficit. Interest on the debt added up to R$ 1.16 trillion in the twelve months through June, more than R$ 3 billion a day, according to Central Bank data cited by CNN Brasil; the entire surplus promised for 2027 would cover less than six days of that bill.A recent history of deficits and the debt billRed ink has been the recent rule for federal accounts. The last positive year was 2022, a result analysts consider one-off, propped up by a constitutional amendment that delayed precatórios and by extraordinary dividends from state-owned companies, G1 reports. The fiscal rule approved in 2023 promised balance from 2024, targets were loosened in 2024, the official projection still points to a deficit in 2026, and the Transition Amendment of 2022 added about R$ 170 billion in annual spending.The Independent Fiscal Institution (IFI), the Senate body that audits public accounts, estimates that annual surpluses of 2.1% of GDP, roughly 16 times the promised figure, would be needed just to stop the debt from growing. Gross debt is near 82% of GDP, the highest level since the pandemic, after rising more than 10 percentage points since 2023, according to CNN Brasil. That is why, in the October campaign, the government plans of the presidential candidates call for adjustment and a return to surpluses, as G1 reports.

Brazil's benchmark rate, the Selic, stands at 14% a year, and Finance Minister Dario Durigan said on Monday (Aug 31) that bringing it down is the country's main economic challenge. Speaking to investors at Macro Day 26, an event held by the bank BTG Pactual, he promised a seven-front fiscal agenda to take rates to what he called a "civilized" level. The rate is the starting point for the credit families use to buy a fridge in installments and companies use to finance production.According to Folha de S.Paulo, the seven fronts include meeting the primary result targets, strengthening the fiscal framework, controlling mandatory spending and reviewing tax benefits. Durigan promised "growing and recurring primary surpluses" from 2027. The surplus of 0.1% of GDP forecast for next year should be the minimum floor for the years after, the minister told Exame, referring to a possible new term for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.Why public accounts hold up interest ratesUnderstand: the Selic is the basic rate Brazil's central bank sets to contain inflation, and it anchors every loan in the country, from credit card revolving debt to farm financing. A primary surplus means the government collects more than it spends, excluding interest payments on its debt. When markets trust that accounts are under control, inflation pressure eases and the central bank gains room to cut the rate.The urgency comes from the size of the debt: it reached 82.5% of GDP in July, the highest level in more than five years, according to news outlet G1. Put plainly, the government owes more than four fifths of everything the country produces in a year. Durigan argued for keeping the fiscal framework, which caps spending growth at 2.5% above inflation, and improving it rather than replacing it; the 2027 budget bill sent to Congress on Monday projects mandatory spending growing less than the overall limit."É o custo do dinheiro no país. Nós temos que fazer avançar uma agenda olhando para essa milha final, que é como que a gente traz os juros... com patamar civilizado." ("It is the cost of money in the country. We have to push forward an agenda looking at this final mile, which is how we bring rates... to a civilized level.")The remarks came at the panel "Cenário Econômico" (Economic Outlook), in conversation with BTG Pactual's chief economist, Mansueto Almeida. The audience was Faria Lima, the São Paulo avenue whose name doubles as shorthand for Brazil's financial market. In Durigan's view, expensive money hurts the Treasury, families, companies and farmers.Where the adjustment will biteThe main target is spending the budget pays by obligation, with no annual vote in Congress. This year the government cut 10% of non-constitutional tax benefits, which should bring in about R$ 20 billion, Exame reported. "If we are doing a 10% revision this year, we will do another 10%, or 5% at least, next year," the minister said, defending fresh linear cuts in each following year.According to Folha, Durigan said the government wants to reach the goal while keeping social programs and gaining efficiency in how benefits are granted and monitored. At the same event, André Esteves of BTG Pactual said Brazil has a "golden opportunity" to reach civilized rates and that the Selic could be at 7%, according to Valor Econômico, less than half the current 14%. NeoFeed described the seven fronts as the priorities of a possible next administration, one month before October's election.

Brazil's gross public debt reached 82.5% of GDP in July, its highest level in over five years, the Central Bank reported on Monday (Aug 31). In practical terms, paying off what the public sector owes would take almost ten months of everything the country produces in a year. In cash terms, the debt stands at R$ 10.95 trillion.The public accounts posted a primary surplus of R$ 1.4 billion in the same month, against a deficit of R$ 66.6 billion in July 2025, a month weighed down by the payment of precatórios, the government debts recognized by Brazil's courts. The surplus came from the federal government, which saved R$ 11 billion; states and municipalities ran a deficit of R$ 8.5 billion, and state-owned companies of R$ 1.1 billion. Even so, the monthly result covers less than half a day of the interest paid in July, which totaled R$ 99 billion.In short: the primary surplus is what the government collects minus what it spends, leaving interest on the debt out of the math. Gross debt adds up what the federal government, states, municipalities and state companies owe, measured against GDP, everything Brazil produces in a year. When interest exceeds the budget surplus, the debt keeps rising even in a good month.Yearly accounts still in the redIn the first seven months of the year, the public sector has a primary deficit of R$ 78.8 billion, equal to 1% of GDP, up from R$ 44.5 billion (0.61% of GDP) in the same period of 2025. That already exceeds the central target for the year, which allows a deficit of R$ 34.3 billion, though the rules let the government exclude up to R$ 63.5 billion of spending from the calculation. The federal government alone has accumulated a deficit of R$ 82.4 billion.Interest pushes the debt upInterest is the main driver of the rise: it totaled R$ 1.15 trillion over 12 months, 8.67% of GDP, roughly R$ 3 billion a day. Brazil's benchmark rate, the Selic, stands at 14% a year as the Central Bank fights inflation, and it makes rolling over the debt more expensive. According to Poder360, nominal interest alone added 0.8 percentage points to the debt in July, while the growth of the economy helped cut the ratio by 0.5 point.Under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the debt has risen 10.8 percentage points in a little over three years, according to news portal G1. Under the IMF's measure, which counts government bonds held by the Central Bank itself, Brazilian debt reaches 95.4% of GDP, above the Eurozone average. The fiscal framework approved in 2023 to replace the spending cap is meant to keep expenditures growing below revenue, but expenses outside its limits keep pushing the debt up, and analysts argue that deeper spending cuts are needed to bring interest rates down.

R$ 1,741 is the minimum wage the Brazilian government has penciled in for 2027 in the budget bill it sends to Congress on Monday (Aug 31). For a worker earning the floor, that means R$ 120 more per month starting in January, up from today's R$ 1,621. Over a year, the extra cash adds up to R$ 1,440, almost one extra month's pay.The projected increase of 7.4% tops by R$ 24 the earlier estimate of R$ 1,717 released in April, a figure announced by Finance Minister Dario Durigan. The same bill sets aside a weighty item: R$ 6 billion to prop up Correios, Brazil's state-owned postal company.The infusion was announced on Sunday (Aug 30) by ministers Bruno Moretti (Planning and Budget), Esther Dweck (Management and Innovation) and Frederico Siqueira (Communications), according to InfoMoney. In a joint note, they said the money will give the company stability to renegotiate debts and carry out its restructuring plan. The amount is close to the R$ 7.6 billion Correios spent on services in the first half, a period in which it posted a loss of R$ 5.5 billion, according to the results released on Saturday (Aug 29).What the budget bill isThe document is the annual budget bill, known in Brazil as PLOA, which estimates federal revenue and authorizes spending for the following year. The minimum wage figure inside it is a working number used to calculate benefits and fiscal obligations. The final floor is only set at the end of 2026, by adding 2.5% real growth to inflation as measured by the INPC price index through November.The floor matters well beyond paychecks. Around 45% of payments made by Brazil's general pension system, the RGPS, are benefits worth exactly one minimum wage, according to news site ContilNet. The adjustment also moves the BPC assistance benefit, unemployment insurance, the salary bonus and the contribution paid by microentrepreneurs known as MEIs."In compliance with Brazilian legislation, and in our spirit of prioritizing the most vulnerable, it also flows into Social Security and the social benefits indexed to the minimum wage," Durigan said.Fiscal roomTo make the budget fit, the government found slack in pension accounts. On Tuesday (Aug 25), the National Social Security Council approved a R$ 5 billion cut in projected INSS pension spending for 2027, lowering it to R$ 1.218 trillion, according to state-run Agência Brasil. The saving opens nearly as much room as the Correios bailout itself.Pensions remain the federal government's biggest bill: pension benefits account for about 43% of the Union's primary spending, which excludes interest payments, according to data presented to the council. Even after the cut, 2027 spending is projected to grow 7.9% over this year's estimate. At Correios, the ministers said debt maturities have been stretched from 18 to 180 months, leaving no loans due in the short term.From here, the bill goes to Congress, where lawmakers can change the figures before voting. And the R$ 1,741 estimate remains subject to revision: if inflation through November surprises, the final 2027 minimum wage can land above or below the projection.

2028: that is the year the so-called split payment should finally become mandatory in sales between companies, Brazil's federal revenue service told the news site g1 on Sunday. For shoppers, nothing changes at the register: the tax stays embedded in the price, as it always has been. For businesses, the decision buys a full extra year to adapt before the new collection system becomes the rule.The initial plan was to have the mechanism available in early 2027, when the CBS, the new federal tax created by Brazil's consumption tax reform, takes effect. Juliano Neves, undersecretary for corporate management at the revenue service, said the government system will be ready early next year. The requirement, however, only arrives after more than 200 financial institutions are connected to the platform, a process expected to unfold gradually through 2027.So in 2027 the rule will be different: optional use, one payment method at a time, starting with electronic funds transfers and static Pix, Brazil's instant payment system. "We will start on an optional basis, payment method by payment method... and we will expand models over the year", Neves said. In each transaction, a company will be able to choose to sell with or without the mechanism."For the companies that will be affected, the first message is: stay calm, split payment will not become mandatory all at once... Nobody will be required to use it while it is not available for every payment method. Probably 2027 will not be enough time", he added.What split payment meansToday a company receives the full value of a sale, sets aside the tax share and pays the government at the end of the month, using a collection document known as Darf. Under split payment, the bank splits the money at the moment of the transaction: the tax slice goes straight to the federal, state and municipal governments, and the seller keeps the rest. With a 20% rate, a 100-real sale, roughly a basic grocery run, would send 20 reais to the treasury instantly and leave 80 reais for the seller.The model aims to cut tax evasion and let firms recover tax credits on the same day. Without a mandatory split payment in 2027, companies will keep issuing invoices and paying taxes at the end of the month, as they do now. Refunds of tax paid at earlier stages of production will take up to two months, the equivalent of waiting two paychecks to see the money again.There is a shortcut, the Recolhimento pelo Adquirente (RAD): the buying company collects the tax itself and gets the credit faster, while the seller receives the amount already net of tax. The 2028 date, though, is not yet written into any rule. According to InfoMoney, which reports that the revenue service confirmed the timeline to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, the schedule depends on banks and payment operators adapting, and the formal requirement will only come once every method is ready.

Casas Bahia has won 180 days of protection from its creditors. On Friday (28), judge Tainá Maria Leonardo de Oliveira of the Sao Paulo court that handles bankruptcies suspended all collection lawsuits and enforcement actions against the group, with effects through February 15, 2027. For shoppers, the practical meaning is simple: stores, the website and installment purchases keep running while the retailer tries to renegotiate R$ 17.3 billion in debt, about US$ 3.3 billion at recent exchange rates, or enough to buy nearly 35,000 homes priced at R$ 500,000 each.The judicial recovery filing was made on August 16 and covers Casas Bahia plus nine other companies in the group. The debt under negotiation is large even by corporate standards. The 180-day clock started on August 19, when the judge had already granted part of the protections.What judicial recovery meansIn brief: judicial recovery is Brazil's version of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States. It lets an over-indebted company renegotiate terms, interest and discounts with creditors under court supervision, instead of going bankrupt. The shield granted now is the so-called stay period, a legal truce that suspends collections so the company can breathe; it covers most lawsuits, but not tax collections or credits that Brazilian law keeps outside the process.A rush of creditorsThe ruling follows an alert raised by the company itself. According to the retailer, court-ordered freezes had blocked about R$ 9 million within days, less than 0.1% of the total debt, but a sign of imminent asset depletion in the judge's view."The news of the recovery filing triggered a rush of creditors against the group's assets, with court-ordered freezes reaching about R$ 9 million in a few days and an imminent risk of asset depletion," the judge wrote, adding that the danger of damage is "concrete and current".Before deciding whether to accept the filing for good, the court ordered a preliminary review: a specialized firm will examine the group's documents and finances, with a report due within 30 days. The judge noted that the law allows suspending enforcement even before the formal decision to process the case, as reported by InfoMoney.The decision also forces banks and payment processors to release the retailer's money. BTG Pactual must restore the company's access to its bank accounts within 24 hours, and card acquirers Cielo, Getnet and Redecard must stop withholding sales proceeds solely because of the filing. Noncompliance carries a daily fine of R$ 100,000, roughly the price of a new economy car in Brazil.Casas Bahia withdrew its requests against Banco do Brasil, with which it is negotiating a consensual solution, according to news outlet g1. In its initial petition, the company said the bank, a guarantor of contracts with Apple and insurer Mapfre, debited about R$ 422 million from the group's accounts after the guarantees were called. That is nearly 50 times the R$ 9 million blocked in the early rush.In the stock market, the punishment continues: shares of the retailer (BHIA3, traded in Sao Paulo) fell 56% in August, according to newspaper Estadão. An investor who put R$ 1,000 into the stock at the start of the month had about R$ 440 left by Friday's close. The company blames high interest rates, expensive credit and weak consumer spending for the crisis.It is the retailer's second attempt to sort out its debts: in 2024 it renegotiated R$ 4.1 billion through an extrajudicial recovery, a deal struck with creditors without going to court. In August it announced the closure of nearly 300 stores and the dismissal of about 3,000 employees, and says the current process aims to preserve more than 20,000 jobs. According to the company, physical stores, e-commerce and other sales channels continue to operate normally.

US$4.055 billion. That is how much money left Brazil, on a net basis, in a single week, according to Central Bank data released on Wednesday (26). In response to the dollar outflow, the monetary authority held two simultaneous US$1 billion auctions on Thursday morning (27) to inject liquidity into the foreign exchange market, making sure dollars remain available for those who need to buy them.The move matters to ordinary Brazilians because capital outflows push the dollar up. The U.S. currency closed Wednesday at R$5.1533, up 0.23%, and every cent added to the exchange rate makes imported goods, fuel and foreign travel more expensive. The US$4 billion that left the country in seven days is worth about R$21 billion at the current rate.In the first operation, the Central Bank sold US$1 billion in spot dollars, accepting 12 bids. In the second, it offered 20,000 so-called reverse currency swap contracts, also worth US$1 billion, maturing on October 1, according to Reuters. The last such operation had taken place on June 22.How it worksTogether, the two auctions form what traders call the "casadão", Portuguese for "big pairing". A currency swap is a contract that works like a future sale of dollars, and a reverse swap does the opposite, working like a future purchase. Because the bank sold US$1 billion in the spot market and bought the same amount in the futures market, the effect on the exchange rate is, in theory, zero: the goal is to supply liquidity without steering the price.Brazil's foreign exchange flow for August is negative by US$2.55 billion from the start of the month through Friday (21). Currency traders quoted by Folha de S.Paulo said Thursday's auctions were likely driven by that flow. They noted that the Central Bank only steps in when it detects an imbalance between dollar supply and demand."The premise is that we faced heavy financial outflows in Thursday's session and that is why the operation was needed," Leonel de Oliveira Mattos, a market intelligence analyst at brokerage StoneX, told Folha. He said the bank monitors dollar demand to act preventively and has also been reducing its stock of swap contracts.The outflow comes at a time of weak external accounts. The Central Bank reported this week that the current account, the broadest measure of Brazil's transactions with the rest of the world, posted a US$8.11 billion deficit in July, above what analysts surveyed by Reuters expected.

Six times more. That is how much the world will need to expand the supply of critical minerals over the next 20 years, according to an International Energy Agency estimate cited by Gustavo Pimenta, the chief executive of Vale, Brazil's mining giant and one of the world's largest iron ore producers. For ordinary Brazilians, this is about the jobs and export revenue at stake in a global race for the materials inside phone batteries, electric cars and computer chips.Speaking on Friday (28) at the Lide Mining Forum in Sao Paulo, Pimenta said these minerals will be the "new oil" of coming generations and that Brazil is falling behind in the race. His remarks were covered by Folha de S.Paulo, Poder360 and CNN Brasil."Critical minerals will play a very important geopolitical and economic role over the next hundred years. It is the new fuel, the new oil of the next generations," the executive said at the event.To show how much ground Brazil has lost, Pimenta compared the country with Australia on iron ore. In 2010, both produced similar volumes, around 380 million and 400 million tonnes respectively. Fifteen years later, Australia reached 1 billion tonnes a year while Brazil stayed at the same level, according to the figures he presented. He said the same pattern occurred with nickel and copper.The gap also shows in the weight of mining in the economy. The sector accounts for 14% of Australia's GDP (gross domestic product, the total value of everything a country produces) and 12% of Chile's, against only 4% in Brazil. It is as if two neighbors had equally rich backyards, but only one of them invested to harvest the fruit.UnderstandCritical minerals are raw materials essential to modern industry, such as lithium, nickel, copper and cobalt. Without them there are no batteries, wind turbines or artificial intelligence equipment, which explains why countries are competing for reserves and investment in the sector.In the executive's view, Brazil's main bottleneck is slowness. A mining project now takes an average of 15 years from exploration to operation, long enough for a child to go from daycare to high school. Pimenta called for faster environmental licensing without losing rigor, changes to legislation on natural cavities and an expansion of geological mapping.Only 28% of Brazilian territory is known from a mining standpoint, compared with more than 70% in Australia and Chile, according to the numbers he presented. The Vale CEO also backed a critical minerals bill currently moving through Brazil's Congress. "Brazil is a blessed country. We have the periodic table in our territory, all the minerals in abundance. However, despite all this potential, we are falling behind in the race," he said, as quoted by CNN Brasil.

Unemployment in Brazil fell to 5.3% in the quarter ending in July, the lowest for that period since statistics agency IBGE began the series in 2012. In practice, 5.8 million people are still looking for work, but that is 503,000 fewer than in the quarter ending in April, when the rate was 5.8%. The figures come from PNAD Continua, the national household survey, released on Thursday (27).The labor market keeps creating jobs despite high interest rates, which make credit more expensive and usually cool the economy. The employed population hit a record 103.3 million, with about 1 million more workers in the quarter, according to Ponta Negra News' coverage of the IBGE data. The result matched the median of forecasts collected by Reuters.The warning sign is in the wallet. Average real income, already adjusted for inflation, stood at R$ 3,762 a month and slipped 0.7% in the quarter, a change IBGE considers stable. Compared with the same period of 2025, when the average was R$ 3,642, workers now take home R$ 120 more a month, roughly the cost of one extra trip to the supermarket.Understanding the numbersPNAD Continua measures unemployment over rolling three-month periods that overlap to give more precise readings. Real income shows what a paycheck actually buys after price increases are stripped out. When IBGE calls a figure stable, the variation was too small to count as a real shift.The sum of all wages earned in the country, known as the real wage bill, hit a record R$ 383.5 billion, up 4.1% in a year, an extra R$ 15.1 billion flowing through the economy. In the quarter, however, growth was just 0.2%, nearly flat. That loss of momentum in pay supports the reading of a job market that is still hot but delivering smaller gains to workers, as UOL Economia pointed out.Construction drove job creation in the quarter, adding 371,000 workers, a 5.1% rise. According to William Kratochwill, the IBGE analyst for the survey, the advance came mainly from bricklayers and building laborers, as reported by Jornal Grande Bahia. Over one year, transport, storage and mail services also grew 5.4%, a segment that includes app delivery riders.Not every number is positive. Informality rose from 37.2% to 37.5% of employed workers, with 13.8 million people working without a signed labor card, 477,000 more in the quarter. Without the labor card, a worker has no unemployment insurance, paid vacation or the year-end bonus known in Brazil as the 13th salary. Discouragement, people who stopped looking for work because they believed they would not find a job, fell 9.7% to 2.3 million.

Brazil had 214.2 million inhabitants as of July 1, 2026, according to estimates released on Friday (28) by IBGE, the national statistics institute. The figure matters beyond the headline: it determines how much federal money each city hall receives, because it feeds the calculation of the FPM, the Municipal Participation Fund that transfers federal revenue to towns.Growth versus 2025, when the country had 213.4 million people, was 0.37%. Put differently, for every 1,000 Brazilians, fewer than four people were added to the total in one year. In 2025 the rate was slightly higher, at 0.39%.In absolute terms, Brazil gained 790,900 residents in one year, according to IBGE. As Folha de S.Paulo put it, that is roughly ten packed Maracanã stadiums, Rio's iconic football arena, joining the count.How the math worksSince Brazil does not run its census every year, IBGE projects the population of each municipality using July 1 as the reference date. The federal audit court (TCU) then uses these estimates to split the FPM and the FPE, the equivalent fund for states and the Federal District. For small towns these transfers are often the main source of revenue, so every resident more or less changes the local budget.The country now has 15 municipalities with more than 1 million inhabitants, counting the capital Brasília. Together they hold 42.9 million people, 20% of the national population. São Paulo remains the largest city, with 11.9 million residents; only Guarulhos and Campinas, both in São Paulo state, are not state capitals.At the other end, Serra da Saudade, in Minas Gerais state, is Brazil's smallest municipality, with just 857 residents. Anhanguera (Goiás), Borá (São Paulo) and Araguainha (Mato Grosso) also have fewer than 1,000 people each, according to IBGE.Slower growth ahead, then declineIn the early 2000s Brazil's population grew more than 1% per year, almost triple the current pace, according to estimates IBGE revised in 2024. Institute researchers point to fewer children per woman and faster aging as the drivers of the slowdown.Projections show the country reaching a population peak of 220.43 million people in 2041. From 2042 onward the trend reverses, and the decline is expected to intensify in the following decades.Among the states, Mato Grosso do Sul saw its population rise 0.74% to 2,946,273 residents, double the national pace, according to Campo Grande News.

R$ 10 billion. That is how much the federal government has already cut from mandatory spending in the 2027 budget approved by Congress two weeks ago, according to the Finance Minister. In practical terms, that is about R$ 47 per Brazilian that would stop leaving public coffers next year.The promise to go further came on Friday (28) from Dario Durigan, the Finance Minister who serves as the economic spokesman for President Lula's reelection campaign. In an interview with C-Level, a weekly videocast from the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, he said Lula wants, if reelected in October, to lift payroll taxes for every sector of the economy to lower the cost of hiring in Brazil. The proposal would shift the tax now levied on wages to companies' gross revenue.How payroll relief would workPayroll relief means exempting companies from the social security contribution they pay on top of wages. Today, for every R$ 1,000 in payroll, an employer pays R$ 200 to INSS, Brazil's social security agency, plus other charges. The government's idea is to swap that tax for a rate on gross revenue, meaning what a company earns from sales and services.Durigan said the previous version of the policy, scrapped by the current government itself, had a flaw: it favored chosen sectors. The new model, he said, would be general and equal for all, as part of a broader discussion about corporate tax reform."I am willing to discuss migrating payroll taxation to some other parameter, such as revenue. What was the problem with the payroll tax relief that we fought to end, and did? It picked sectors. It is time to have a broader discussion about corporate tax reform," the minister said.On the spending side, Durigan said Lula committed to reviewing mandatory expenses, items whose increases are guaranteed by law, including social benefits, and to creating new spending brakes. According to Brasil 247, the plan includes triggers to curb personnel costs starting next year. "The job of a Finance Minister in a next Lula government is to improve the fiscal condition every day by reducing mandatory spending," he said.The minister also defended the arcabouço fiscal, the rule that now lets public spending grow up to 2.5% above inflation. "The fiscal framework worked. We grew spending in the country, but at a slower pace than revenue," he said, admitting the parameters can be adjusted to ensure public debt falls.Among the examples of restraint, Durigan cited the BPC, a benefit paid to poor elderly and disabled people: he said 25% to 30% of grants were being made through the courts, without standardization, and the government partnered with the National Justice Council, the judiciary's oversight body, and adopted biometric identification to organize the rolls.The minister also rejected the idea that the economy is in crisis, despite court-supervised restructurings at companies such as retailer Casas Bahia and restaurant chain Habib's, accusing the opposition of exploiting the cases politically. According to Brasil 247, he also pressed for cuts to the Selic, Brazil's benchmark interest rate, which drives up the cost of credit for anyone financing a car, a home or working capital.

R$ 5.20. That is how much one US dollar was worth in Brazil this Friday (28), after Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh signaled at the Jackson Hole symposium that US interest rates may rise again, according to InfoMoney. For ordinary Brazilians the message is direct: at R$ 5.20, every US$ 100 spent on international purchases or travel costs R$ 520, and a stronger dollar usually filters through to fuel and supermarket prices later, since oil and many goods are priced in dollars.Speaking at Jackson Hole, the annual gathering of central bankers in Wyoming, Warsh said the US economy keeps growing but signs that inflation is converging to the 2% target remain weak, InfoMoney reported. "It is our responsibility to ensure price stability", he said. According to CNN Brasil, he added that without certainty that inflation is moving toward the target fast enough, the Fed has "more work to do".Markets read the speech as a rate hike warning. Bets on an increase in the US rate at the September 18 meeting jumped from 35.4% to 59.7%, according to CME Group's FedWatch tool cited by InfoMoney. US rates currently sit between 3.5% and 3.75% a year, and investors now see a rise to between 3.75% and 4% as likely.UnderstandHigher interest rates in the United States act like a magnet for global money. When the US rate rises, investors tend to pull funds out of countries like Brazil to buy US Treasury bonds, seen as the safest investment in the world. With fewer dollars circulating in the Brazilian market, the currency gets more expensive in reais.Brazil's stock market felt it too. The Ibovespa, the main index of the B3 exchange in São Paulo, was down 0.60% around 12:45 p.m. at 174,084 points, ending a run of seven straight gains. "He gave every hint, even if he did not spell it out, that he will raise rates", economist Marcelo Fonseca of CVPAR told InfoMoney.August has been a back and forth month for Brazilian investors. At one point the Ibovespa was down almost 7% for the month; a later recovery cut the losses to about 1%, according to Eduardo Carlier, co-head of investments at Azimut Brasil. He said the firm remains conservative, with more money in fixed income, waiting for clarity on the election and on US rates.

Brazil created 58,568 formal jobs in July, the Ministry of Labor and Employment reported on Friday (28). That is a drop of 56.3% from the same month in 2025, when 133,900 payroll jobs were added. For anyone looking for work, the message is direct: less than half as many formal positions were left over this July compared with a year ago.The net figure comes from 2.26 million hires against 2.2 million layoffs in the month, according to G1. It was the weakest July since 2020, when the country shed 108,500 jobs during the pandemic. Economists surveyed by Reuters had expected a much stronger result, around 112,000 new positions.Understand: what the Caged measuresThe numbers come from the Caged, the federal registry of hirings and dismissals of workers with a signed employment card, Brazil's formal labor contract. The headline balance is the difference between entries and exits. Because informal and self-employed workers are left out, the data cannot be compared directly with the unemployment rate from statistics agency IBGE, which stood at 5.3% in the quarter through July, the lowest for that period since 2012.Year to date is also the weakest since 2020From January to July, the country added 972,200 formal jobs, the ministry said. The total is 21% below the same stretch of 2025, when 1.23 million positions were created, and it is the smallest January-to-July balance since 2020.Even with the slower pace, the stock of formal jobs kept growing and reached 48.08 million at the end of July, up from 47.2 million a year earlier. Four of the five sectors of the economy added jobs in the month, and four of Brazil's five regions posted a positive balance.The average starting salary was R$ 2,419.23 (about US$ 460), a real gain above inflation against both June (R$ 2,404.10) and July 2025 (R$ 2,370.85). In practice, those who did land a formal job entered with slightly more purchasing power than workers hired a year earlier.

R$ 6 billion. That is the amount the Lula government plans to set aside in the 2027 federal budget to rescue Correios, Brazil's state-owned postal company, which is going through a financial crisis. Spread across the country's population, estimated by statistics agency IBGE at 214.2 million people, the injection works out to about R$ 28 per Brazilian. The information was confirmed to Folha de S.Paulo by two members of the economic team and by Planning and Budget Minister Bruno Moretti. In an interview with Valor Econômico, Moretti said the "most likely" scenario is to include the full amount in the 2027 budget bill, which the government must send to Congress by the end of August. The promise to put money into the company did not come out of nowhere. It was demanded by the five banks that lent R$ 12 billion to Correios at the end of last year: Banco do Brasil, Caixa Economica Federal, Bradesco, Itaú and Santander. To close the deal, the Finance Ministry guaranteed the loan and signaled that federal money could go into the company's cash position, and the banks asked for the promise to become a contractual clause. Understand: the injection is a capitalization, meaning the federal government, which owns Correios, puts its own money into the company to strengthen its finances. So far, the government has not transferred any funds to the company: it only guaranteed the loan, which forces the Treasury to pay the banks if the postal company misses its installments. The contract requires the R$ 6 billion transfer, half the size of the loan, to happen by the end of 2027, but the exact timing is up to the federal government. "We will religiously fulfill the contractual obligation we have. We will fulfill it within the fiscal rules," Moretti told Folha. Until last month, the government was still considering forecasting a smaller amount in the budget and raising it over the course of 2027 through additional credits. It also discussed advancing part of the injection to this year. According to Moretti, a transfer still in 2026 is "very difficult", because R$ 17.9 billion is currently blocked in this year's budget to offset the growth of mandatory spending, such as pensions.

Out of every R$ 100 lent by banks in Brazil, nearly R$ 5 were more than 90 days overdue in July. The average default rate rose from 4.6% in June to 4.9% in July, the highest level since March 2011, when the Central Bank's revised data series begins, according to figures released on Friday (28) and reported by G1. In practice, more families and businesses are falling behind on their payments, and credit could get even more expensive for everyone.For individuals, the squeeze is tighter: defaults rose from 5.4% to 5.8%, also a record for the series. Among companies, the rate climbed from 3.2% to 3.3%, the highest since October 2017, when it reached 3.4%.Understand the indicatorBrazil's Central Bank counts as in default any credit operation more than 90 days past due, covering loans, financing and credit cards held by households and companies. When this rate rises, banks tend to lend less and charge higher interest to offset the risk. That is why the indicator affects even borrowers who pay on time.The record came even with the Novo Desenrola Brasil program, known as Desenrola 2.0, running since May. The program is the federal government's latest debt renegotiation scheme, and according to the Finance Ministry it had already renegotiated more than R$ 22 billion across about 3.6 million agreements by the end of June. Finance Minister Dario Durigan said this week that enrollment in the program was extended until August 31.Household indebtedness remains high as well. The outstanding balance of family debt equaled 49.8% of income accumulated over 12 months in June, stable from the previous month, according to the Central Bank. For a family earning R$ 3,000 a month, that is roughly R$ 18,000 in debt.Data from credit bureau Serasa Experian cited by G1 show that 82.8 million Brazilians were in debt in March, equivalent to 49% of the population, with balances totaling R$ 557.7 billion. Of that total, 47% was concentrated in financial institutions, precisely the target of Desenrola 2.0.

R$ 1.885 per 100 kWh. That is the surcharge that will keep weighing on Brazilian power bills in September, after the national electricity regulator Aneel confirmed on Friday (28) that the yellow tariff flag remains in place. For a household consuming 200 kWh a month, the extra cost comes to R$ 3.77, roughly the price of a coffee with a cheese bread at a bakery.The surcharge has become routine. The yellow flag has been in effect since May, according to G1, following four straight months of green flag, when bills carry no extra charge.Understand: what the tariff flags areBrazil's tariff flags work like a traffic light on the power bill: they show how much it costs to generate electricity in the country that month. Brazil relies heavily on hydroelectric dams, so when rain is scarce and reservoirs run low, the grid must switch on thermal plants, which produce more expensive energy. Aneel adopted the system in 2015 to make that cost transparent to consumers.The charge for each color is as follows:Green (favorable conditions): no surcharge;Yellow (less favorable conditions): R$ 1.885 per 100 kWh;Red, level 1 (unfavorable conditions): R$ 4.463 per 100 kWh;Red, level 2 (very unfavorable conditions): R$ 7.877 per 100 kWh.According to Aneel, keeping the yellow flag reflects the dry season, with lower reservoir levels and the need to activate costlier thermal generation. In a statement, the agency said that "small changes in habits can help reduce consumption and control spending on the power bill".The charge applies to all consumers served by distribution companies, except those in isolated grid systems, InfoMoney reports. The surcharge appears as a separate line on each month's bill.

Brazil's pension system already consumes 8% of everything the economy produces in a year, as if R$ 8 out of every R$ 100 the country generated went straight to retirees. That is the bill presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) promises not to touch. In an interview with TV Globo on Friday (28), he said that, if elected in October, he will carry out a fiscal adjustment without changing pensions or the minimum wage appreciation policy. "There is no need to save money on the backs of retirees," the senator said, according to Folha de S.Paulo. "I will not save money at the expense of those who earn the minimum wage," he added. In practice, that means keeping the annual adjustments that restore inflation losses for millions of beneficiaries of the INSS, Brazil's social security agency. Instead, Flávio said the adjustment would come from fighting pension fraud, cutting ministries, political appointees and taxes. "I will run a lean government, reduce the number of ministries, cut bureaucracy, take the scissors to taxes," he said. He told G1 he also plans to revoke more than a thousand regulatory acts early in his term, without detailing the size of the cuts in reais or a deadline for the target. Why the minimum wage matters In Brazil, the minimum wage works as a ruler for the federal budget: INSS pensions and the BPC, a benefit paid to poor elderly and disabled people, are adjusted by the same index. Today the formula adds 12-month inflation through November of the previous year plus GDP growth from two years earlier. Any change to that rule hits some of the government's biggest expenses and, at the same time, the pockets of those who live on one minimum wage a month. Despite the promise, Flávio did not say whether he would keep the current adjustment formula, both Folha and G1 noted. He also dodged questions about the level of public debt under his government. Gross debt closed May at 81.1% of GDP, up from 80.2% the previous month, a ratio comparable to a household owing 81% of everything it earns in a year. The statement comes in the same week that economists led by Paulo Tafner, a leading voice in the pension debate since the 1990s, are preparing a new pension reform proposal to present to the candidates. By the authors' math, without changes spending would jump from 8% to 17% of GDP by 2100, or R$ 17 out of every R$ 100 produced, while their proposal would stabilize it at around 10%. "The pension system as it stands cannot hold up," Tafner told Folha.

R$ 5.196. That is what one US dollar cost at the close of trading in Brazil this Friday (28), up 0.62% on the day. For anyone planning a trip abroad or shopping on an international website, US$ 100 now costs R$ 519.60, roughly R$ 3.20 more than the day before.The trigger came from abroad. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said in a speech that the US central bank "has work to do" if inflation does not return clearly to its 2% annual target, according to CNN Brasil. Markets read the remarks as a warning that US interest rates could rise as early as September.Warsh spoke at the Jackson Hole symposium, the annual gathering of central bankers in the United States. Inflation as measured by the PCE index, the Fed's preferred gauge of consumer prices, stood at 3.7% in the 12 months through July, nearly double the target, CNN Brasil reported.Why it mattersHigher US interest rates act like a magnet for global money. When US Treasury bonds pay more, investors pull funds out of countries like Brazil to invest there, which reduces the supply of dollars in Brazil and pushes the currency's price up.Before the speech, investors saw roughly a one-in-three chance of a rate hike in September, according to CME Group data. Afterward, the yield on the two-year US Treasury note, the most sensitive to rate expectations, climbed to 4.35%, Agência Brasil reported. US benchmark rates have been held at 3.50% to 3.75% since December, and the Fed's next decision is due on September 15 and 16.During the session, the dollar dipped as low as R$ 5.1581 at the open, then gained strength and hit R$ 5.23 around 1:18 p.m., the day's high, before easing back to R$ 5.196 at the close. The currency gained 1.06% over the week, though it remains down 5.34% for the year, meaning the real is still stronger than it was in January.Brazilian data also moved markets. The country created 58,568 formal jobs in July, the worst result for the month since 2020, according to Caged, the official payroll registry. The weak figure reinforced bets that the Central Bank of Brazil will cut the Selic, the country's benchmark rate now at 14% a year, by 0.25 percentage point to 13.75% at its September meeting.The stock market shrugged off the gloom abroad. The Ibovespa, the main index of the B3 exchange in São Paulo, rose 0.30% to 175,664 points, an eighth straight gain, and ended the week up 2.71%. In New York it was the opposite: the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all fell, with the tech-heavy index down 0.52%, according to Agência Brasil.

Brazil's gross public debt has passed R$ 10 trillion and now equals 82% of GDP, almost everything the country produces in a full year. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Thursday (27) that the figure does not worry him and that growth is his plan to shrink it. The size of the debt matters to ordinary Brazilians because the government pays steep interest on it, a cost that competes with health and education in the federal budget. In an interview with TV Globo, the fourth in a series with presidential candidates, Lula was asked what debt level he would target in a possible new term. He gave no target and compared Brazil to more indebted nations. "80% debt in a country is not much. Look at the United States, Japan, Italy. Do you know what the US debt is? 120% of GDP", he said, according to G1. Understand: what debt-to-GDP means GDP is the sum of all goods and services a country produces in a year. Saying the debt equals 82% of GDP is like a household owing 82% of everything it earns in twelve months. If income grows faster than the debt, the burden falls, and that is Lula's bet when he talks about growth. The president blamed the 10 percentage point rise in the debt during his government on the 14% a year interest rate and on a 2.8% deficit he says he inherited from Jair Bolsonaro. In practice, a 14% rate turns every R$ 100 owed into R$ 114 after one year, before anything is repaid. According to InfoMoney, Lula also recalled the primary surpluses of his first two terms and said: "If there is one thing that guides my life, it is called fiscal responsibility". A primary surplus is when the government collects more than it spends, before interest payments. The 2027 budget is being drafted with a surplus target of 0.2% of GDP, and Finance Minister Dario Durigan defends curbing mandatory spending. Pressed on which expenses he would cut, Lula made no specific commitment, while economists cited by InfoMoney say stabilizing the debt will require lasting improvement in the primary result. Correios: a R$ 15 billion hole and a veto on privatization In the same interview, Lula ruled out privatizing Correios, the state-owned postal service that reaches every Brazilian municipality and has posted four straight years of losses, with a record hole of R$ 15 billion. "I do not consider selling Correios, I do not. I want to recover Correios", he said, adding that since 1985 the company has been in crisis and someone has always proposed privatizing it. Lula admitted the company "did not adapt to a new time" as private delivery firms advanced, and said its new management will carry out "whatever downsizing is necessary". He raised the possibility of partnerships with Brazilian or foreign companies to improve services. The first round of the election, in which Lula seeks a fourth term, takes place on October 4.

Brazilians spent US$ 2.45 billion on international travel in July, the highest figure in the Central Bank's historical series, which began in January 1995. At the month's closing exchange rate, that is roughly R$ 12.4 billion leaving the country in airfares, hotels and shopping.The number, released on Thursday (27) by the Central Bank and reported by G1 and CNN Brasil, tops the previous record set in July 2014, when spending reached US$ 2.41 billion. From January to July, Brazilians' expenses abroad total US$ 15.1 billion, also a record for the period.Two factors explain the jump. The first is a cheaper dollar: the US currency closed July at R$ 5.0696, down 7.64% for the year, which lowers the price in reais of tickets and lodging. The second is the calendar: July is school holiday month in Brazil, when family trips pick up.UnderstandThe Central Bank books this spending in the international travel account, part of the current account, the balance of everything Brazil pays to and receives from the rest of the world. When the dollar falls, the same budget in reais buys more US currency, so families can travel more or spend more abroad.In practice, a trip budgeted at US$ 2,000 cost about R$ 800 less in July than it would have at the late-2025 exchange rate, when the dollar was near R$ 5.49. The difference covers a few hotel nights or part of the airfare.On the other side of the counter, foreigners spent US$ 899 million in Brazil in July, according to CNN Brasil. That left the travel account with a negative balance of US$ 1.6 billion for the month, 7.9% wider than in July 2025.External accounts and investmentThe overall current account deficit, meaning how much more the country spent abroad than it received, reached US$ 8.11 billion in July, against US$ 6.94 billion a year earlier. From January to July, the gap stands at US$ 35.97 billion, down 9.6% from the same period in 2025.Foreign direct investment keeps covering that gap. Overseas investors put US$ 54.44 billion into Brazil from January to July, up from US$ 43.74 billion a year earlier, more than enough to finance the deficit. In July alone, inflows were US$ 7.46 billion, below the US$ 8.4 billion of July 2025.

R$ 10.78 billion. That was the primary surplus posted by Brazil's central government in July, the National Treasury reported on Thursday (27). In plain terms, the government took in more than it spent during the month, before interest payments, a cushion worth roughly R$ 50 per Brazilian resident.The turnaround from last year is striking. In July 2025, the accounts closed R$ 59.1 billion in the red, according to Agência Brasil. Picture a household that blew its budget one year and managed to end the same month with cash left over the next. It was the best July result since 2022.The figure also beat market expectations, though forecasts varied widely. Economists polled by Reuters expected a surplus of R$ 10.68 billion, Folha de S.Paulo reported. The Finance Ministry's own Prisma Fiscal survey, by contrast, pointed to a R$ 5.5 billion deficit for the month.Understand itThe primary balance measures the gap between what the government collects and what it spends, excluding interest on the public debt. When money is left over, there is a surplus; when it falls short, a deficit. Brazil's central government combines the National Treasury, the social security system and the Central Bank.July's result came from both sides of the ledger. Net revenue reached R$ 226.3 billion, a real increase of 7.7% over July 2025, driven by income tax, social security contributions amid record formal employment, and natural resource royalties boosted by higher oil prices. Spending fell 20.7% in real terms, to R$ 215.5 billion.Much of the spending drop came from precatórios, court-ordered debts the government must pay. This year those payments were brought forward to March; in 2025 they were concentrated in July. According to Folha, outlays on judicial rulings fell 99% year on year, R$ 37.1 billion less, which also pulled pension benefit spending down 17.7%.Keeping the brake onOne positive month does not erase the year's tally. From January to July, the central government has a deficit of R$ 81.3 billion, and over 12 months the shortfall reaches R$ 71.6 billion, or 0.55% of GDP.Brazil's 2026 fiscal target, set under the country's spending rules known as the fiscal framework, calls for a R$ 34.3 billion surplus, with a tolerance band that allows a zero result. Public investment, meanwhile, fell 29.9% in July in real terms, but is still up 42.7% from January to July, according to the Treasury.

Consumer prices in Brazil fell 0.40% in August, the biggest monthly deflation in four years, according to the newspaper Jornal do Comércio. The figure comes from the IPCA-15, the preview of the country's official inflation index compiled by statistics agency IBGE. In practice, a basket of goods that cost R$ 1,000 got about R$ 4 cheaper in a month.The relief came mainly from electricity bills, gasoline and food, G1 reported. Residential power bills dropped 6.25%: for a family paying R$ 200 a month, that meant roughly R$ 12 in savings. That single discount accounted for 0.22 percentage points of the deflation, according to an analysis in Valor.Understanding the discountThe discount is the so-called bônus de Itaipu, a rebate to consumers funded by surplus balances from the trading account of the Itaipu hydroelectric plant. The effect is temporary: without the bonus, September inflation is expected to pick up again, UOL points out. Even without the rebate, August would still have posted deflation, because food, the heaviest item in the index, fell 0.12%, according to Valor.The concern is what comes next. The end of the power tariff discount and the arrival of a strong El Niño may limit the inflation relief, according to UOL. El Niño, a climate pattern that warms Pacific waters and shifts rainfall in Brazil, tends to make food, energy or both more expensive.In a survey of 171 economists conducted before the central bank's latest rate meeting, the median response pointed to an impact of 0.4 percentage points on inflation this year and 0.3 points in 2027, Valor reports. The estimates use the 2015-2016 El Niño, of similar intensity, as a reference. The Focus bulletin, the central bank's weekly survey of market analysts, already projects inflation of 5.02% in 2026 and 4.25% next year.If those projections hold, inflation would breach the official target ceiling this year and could do so again in 2027, Valor assesses. There are other pressure points: cheaper gasoline, which pushed the transport group down 1% in August, depends on subsidies that are set to end. Consultancy Oxford Economics sees that as the main reason inflation will stop decelerating this year.Services inflation, which tracks wages and employment, remains the main barrier to lower prices: it rose 5.9% over 12 months through July, according to Valor. In August, the health and personal care and personal expenses groups posted the index's biggest increases.For consumers, the picture is one of real but passing relief. Analysts expect one more cut to the Selic, Brazil's benchmark interest rate, to 13.75%. If food prices surge with El Niño, the central bank may have to halt the cutting cycle, according to Valor.

12% per year. That is the ceiling on interest rates for home loans framed under the SFH, Brazil's regulated housing finance system, and Caixa Econômica Federal, the state-owned bank that is the country's biggest mortgage lender, admitted on Thursday (27) that operating under that limit has become hard. For Brazilians hoping to leave the rent cycle, the message is blunt: mortgage credit is likely to stay expensive and scarce while the Selic, the central bank's benchmark rate, sits at 14% per year."We are in a very difficult moment; the 12% cap is challenging," said Inês Magalhães, Caixa's vice-president for Housing, as she discussed the bank's second-quarter results, according to Folha de S.Paulo."Now, we must remember that the SBPE [Brazilian Savings and Loan System] has its origin in savings deposits, and it is a subsidy. In a country with an income pyramid like Brazil's, it is very reasonable to have a guideline so that this resource serves a certain profile of property and population."The problem, the executive explained, is not the cap itself but the math it imposes with the Selic at 14%. In practice, the bank pays close to 14% a year to raise money and earns at most 12% when it lends. It is like buying each basket of groceries for R$ 14 and being forced to resell it for R$ 12: the books simply do not balance.That mismatch, Folha reports, is feeding pressure from financial institutions on the Central Bank to revise the limit. Under the current rule, rates on SFH-framed credit cannot exceed 12% until January.What the SFH isThe SFH is the system that organizes mortgage lending in Brazil. Historically, the money for home loans comes from the poupança, the traditional passbook savings account gathered through the SBPE, which is why its interest rate works as a subsidy, cheaper than market rates. The cap exists to make sure that cheaper money reaches properties and families within a defined income profile.The knot began when the high Selic drained the poupança. With the benchmark rate in double digits, savers moved to CDBs (bank deposit certificates) and Tesouro Direto (government bonds sold to individuals), investments that pay more, and the cheap money behind mortgages shrank.To rebuild the flow, the government authorized banks to raise funds in capital markets through instruments such as LCIs (real estate credit notes, securities investors buy to fund the sector). That money, however, costs well more than savings deposits and swings with investor sentiment, Folha reports.The new housing finance model, announced in late 2025 and being phased in, takes full effect in January 2027. Its goal is to cut the system's historic dependence on savings deposits, which hold less and less money.The pressure on the cap comes at a record moment for the bank: Caixa's mortgage portfolio topped R$ 1 trillion for the first time, up 15% in 12 months, according to O Globo and UOL. In the second quarter, the state bank posted a profit of R$ 3.9 billion, up 5.9%, according to G1.

More than 5 million debt contracts have been renegotiated with steep discounts under Brazil's Novo Desenrola program, which officially ends this Monday (31). The deadline means households earning up to R$ 8,105 per month (roughly five minimum wages) have only hours left to clear their credit records under government-backed terms.Total debt value dropped from R$ 26.33 billion to R$ 5.27 billion after settlements, according to ministry figures reported by InfoMoney. That average discount of roughly 80% represents collective savings larger than the annual budget of a midsize Brazilian municipality, slashing overdue credit card and overdraft balances by up to 90%.How it worksHow it works: Overdraft limits and revolving credit card debt carry the highest interest rates in Brazil when balances go unpaid month after month. Under Desenrola, that compounding debt is replaced with a single new loan capped at 1.99% monthly interest over up to 48 months, with installments starting at R$ 50 (less than the price of a basic lunch in major cities).Consumers must contact their bank directly through mobile apps, websites, or branches, as there is no central government portal for this phase. Major lenders including Caixa Econômica Federal, Banco do Brasil, Itaú, Bradesco, Santander, and Nubank joined the voluntary initiative.Workers can also draw on their FGTS (Brazil's mandatory severance guarantee fund) to pay down debts, using either R$ 1,000 or up to 20% of their available balance. Credit bureaus clear the debtor's record as soon as the first installment is paid.

1,283 fuel stations across Brazil had their business registrations suspended by the federal tax agency, Receita Federal, on Friday (28), in an action named Operation Hidden Pump (Operação Bomba Oculta). In Brazil, that registration, known as CNPJ, works like a company's ID number: without it, a business cannot hold a bank account, use a payment app or issue electronic invoices. For drivers, the move takes off the street pumps that investigators say served as an entry point for organized crime money. Receita's special secretary, Robinson Barreirinhas, said the goal is to financially "suffocate" criminal organizations, according to G1. The operation comes exactly one year after Operation Hidden Carbon (Operação Carbono Oculto), which exposed how criminal gangs had infiltrated the entire fuel supply chain, from imports to retail pumps. "When you suspend or strike the registration of 1,283 clearly irregular companies, many of them directly involved with criminal organizations, you suffocate those organizations financially, you suffocate their money laundering entry point," Barreirinhas said. In practice, a suspended CNPJ is like a person losing their ID card, bank account and instant payment app on the same day. The company disappears from the formal financial system and can no longer move money under a legal appearance. "Without a CNPJ you cannot issue documents, you cannot have a bank account, a fintech account, nothing," the secretary explained. How a gas station becomes a money laundry Money laundering is the process of giving criminal proceeds a legal appearance. According to Receita, the scheme uncovered last year worked in three steps: the station received the money, including cash; the funds flowed through collector accounts at fintechs, Brazil's digital payment companies; and, at the end, they were channeled into investment funds. Since 2019, the national fuel regulator ANP has revoked the operating license of more than 10,000 stations, Receita said. Even without a license, many kept selling fuel because their tax registration remained active. Operation Hidden Pump closes that loophole in a sector that gathers more than 130,000 companies nationwide. In São Paulo, six clandestine stations were sealed on Friday by a task force of about 60 agents. One of them, on the Marginal Tietê expressway, was hastily abandoned by employees during the raid, investigators told G1. In the state, 910 stations now have their state tax registrations suspended: 682 from earlier actions and another 228 added on Friday. Most of the establishments are registered in the name of front men, people who lend their names to hide the real owners, investigators said. The Marginal Tietê station is registered to Amine Mourad, sister of Mohamad Mourad, known as "Primo" and one of the targets of last year's operation. The operation brings together Receita, the São Paulo state finance department, ANP, federal and state government attorneys and the Civil Police. A new tax agency rule published this week sped up the precautionary suspension of registrations. According to Barreirinhas, the physical shutdowns start in the city of São Paulo and will be extended to the rest of the country. For the secretary, the effect goes beyond paperwork: with no channel to move resources, launderers will be forced to look for new routes and expose themselves. "They will have to show up somewhere else to launder this money. And we are watching that," he said.

4.9%. That is the share of all credit in Brazil's financial system that was past due in July, according to figures released this Friday (28) by the Central Bank. It is the highest level since March 2011, when the revised data series began. In practical terms, for every R$ 100 Brazilian banks have lent out, nearly R$ 5 has not come back on time.The rate climbed from 4.6% in June, a 0.3 percentage point rise in a single month. Over 12 months, the increase reaches 0.9 point, according to CNN Brasil. The record came despite the Novo Desenrola Brasil, the federal government's debt renegotiation program launched in May.How the indicator worksThe Central Bank counts as in default any credit operation overdue by more than 90 days, for both individuals and companies. From the banks' perspective, that is debt that has already slipped past the payment calendar and is edging toward a loss.For individuals, the picture is tighter still: default rose from 5.4% in June to 5.8% in July, also a series record. Among companies, the rate went from 3.2% to 3.3%, the highest since October 2017, when it hit 3.4%, according to G1.The figure draws attention because it follows a government push to clear borrowers' names. According to the Finance Ministry, Desenrola 2.0, a program that lets indebted consumers renegotiate what they owe at a discount, had already restructured more than R$ 22 billion in roughly 3.6 million agreements by the end of June. This week, Finance Minister Dario Durigan announced that enrollment in the program was extended to August 31.Half of annual income already spoken forHousehold indebtedness remains high. In June, the latest month available, family debts totaled 49.8% of everything households earn in a year, stable versus the previous month. Put differently, nearly half of the average Brazilian's annual income is already committed before the paycheck even lands.A survey by credit bureau Serasa Experian shows the scale of the problem: in March, 82.8 million Brazilians were in debt, equivalent to 49% of the population. Those debts added up to R$ 557.7 billion, and 47% of the total sat with financial institutions, precisely the target of Desenrola 2.0.

5.3%. That was Brazil's unemployment rate in the quarter ending in July, the lowest reading for that period since the statistics agency IBGE began the series in 2012. In plain terms, fewer Brazilians were hunting for a job and more households had a paycheck coming in every month. The figures come from the PNAD Continua household survey, released on Thursday (27).A year earlier, the rate was 5.6%. In the previous quarter, ending in April, it was 5.8%. In all, 5.8 million people were still out of work, 503,000 fewer than three months before, according to IBGE.On the other side of the ledger, the country reached 103.3 million people employed, an all-time record. Formal private-sector jobs, those with a signed work card, the document that guarantees labor rights in Brazil, also hit a record at 39.4 million workers. These are employees entitled to paid vacation, a year-end bonus and unemployment insurance.How the survey worksThe PNAD Continua, IBGE's national household survey, visits 211,000 homes across the country and tracks the labor market in rolling quarters, which is why the new reading covers May, June and July. Only people who actually looked for work in the 30 days before the interview count as unemployed.Formal jobs rise, but informality persistsNot every new job came with protection. Workers without a signed work card totaled 13.8 million, up 477,000 in the quarter, and the informality rate stood at 37.5% of the employed, or 38.8 million people. According to Agencia Brasil, these workers go without benefits such as unemployment insurance, paid vacation and the year-end bonus.Average monthly income came to R$ 3,762, flat against the previous quarter and 3.3% above a year earlier, about R$ 120 more per month. Total earnings nationwide reached R$ 383.5 billion, the highest in the series. Construction led the quarter, adding 371,000 jobs."Most of it happened among bricklayers and basic construction workers," William Kratochwill, the survey's analyst, told Agencia Brasil. He also noted that technology is opening doors in the job market: "These days, with a phone and a bicycle, you can find work."

33.8% over 12 months. That is the inflation still weighing on Argentine pockets: a product that cost 1,000 pesos a year ago sold for about 1,338 pesos in July. In a bid to bring that number down for good, Argentina's Chamber of Deputies approved on Wednesday (26) President Javier Milei's bill to reform the Carta Orgánica, the charter that defines what the country's central bank can and cannot do.The bill passed with 144 votes in favor and 9 abstentions. Sources differ on the votes against: the AFP news agency counted 109, while the Argentine news site Infobae reported 102. The bill now moves to the Senate, where the government lacks a majority.The core of the reform is a ban on the central bank financing the Treasury by printing money. It outlaws the so-called adelantos transitorios (emergency cash advances the bank used to make to the government) and the direct purchase of public bonds in the primary market.Understand: printing money to pay the government's bills is the classic shortcut that feeds inflation. With more pesos circulating than the economy produces, each note buys less, and a paycheck shrinks by the end of the month. That was the mechanism in full swing when Milei took office in December 2023, with annual inflation running in three digits, according to AFP.What changesThe text also strips the central bank of goals added in 2012 under former president Cristina Kirchner, such as promoting employment and economic development "with social equity". Its declared mission becomes a single one: "to preserve the value of the currency". For economist Martín Kalos, interviewed by AFP, that means, in short, "trying to keep inflation from running too high".Other provisions tighten the design. The bank's results must first cover accumulated losses and rebuild its capital, and removing its president will require a "serious cause" and two thirds of the votes in Congress. An article allowing international reserves to be used as collateral in debt operations passed with 138 votes despite opposition protests, according to Infobae.Milei celebrated on X (formerly Twitter): "A fundamental step to eradicate inflation from the lives of decent Argentines", he wrote. Government lawmakers argue the reform reassures markets and helps lower the riesgo país, the extra interest investors charge to lend money to Argentina.The Peronist opposition sees it differently. Deputy Agustín Rossi said the real goal is to keep the current central bank board running monetary policy "regardless of whether the government loses next year's election". Miguel Ángel Pichetto criticized the model's "rigidity" and said the central bank should be subordinated to the country's growth and development.In the same session, deputies approved the so-called Fiscal Innocence Law 2, which complements a capital regularization program regulated in April and also depends on the Senate. Wednesday's victory relied on allied blocs such as PRO, the party of former president Mauricio Macri, and the centrist UCR.

Brazil recorded an $8.11 billion deficit in its external accounts in July, an outflow of dollars that can weaken the local currency and make imported food and electronics more expensive for consumers. The figure published by the Central Bank on Thursday topped the $6.6 billion shortfall projected by analysts surveyed by Reuters. It marks the widest deficit for the month of July in seven years, worsening from the $6.94 billion deficit seen in July last year.Understand: current account transactions act like the country's national checking account with the rest of the world, tracking goods trade, services, and corporate profit remittances. A deficit means more money left Brazil than came in through day-to-day trade and services.The gap expanded across several key areas. The deficit in services reached $5.27 billion, driven by record spending on overseas travel during the school holiday season. Meanwhile, multinational companies sent $9.39 billion in profits and dividends abroad, up from the $8.96 billion transferred in July 2025.Brazil's trade surplus of $6.15 billion was not enough to offset those outflows, falling short of the $6.39 billion recorded last year. Foreign direct investment in local businesses and factories totaled $7.46 billion, failing to match the $8.4 billion drawn in July of last year.Over the past 12 months, the current account deficit reached 2.49% of gross domestic product, according to data reported by Folha de S.Paulo and G1. The gap leaves the economy more reliant on foreign capital inflows to keep currency fluctuations and domestic prices under control.

Only 5.3% of Brazilian workers were without a job in the three months ending in July. That drop means more families now have wages to cover their rent and grocery bills, according to data released on Thursday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The rate declined from 5.8% in the previous quarter ending in April, marking the lowest level for this time of year since the series began in 2012.The total number of unemployed people seeking work fell to 5.8 million, a drop of 503,000 individuals over three months. Meanwhile, the employed population hit a record high of 103.3 million workers, an increase of one million people, which is comparable to the entire population of an average state capital. The construction sector led the job gains, adding 371,000 workers, mainly bricklayers and construction assistants.Understanding the numbersThe IBGE measures employment through rolling three-month periods in its continuous national household survey, known as Pnad Contínua. This method averages data across consecutive months to smooth out seasonal spikes and show the true direction of the job market.Average monthly earnings held steady at R$ 3,762 (around $680), compared to R$ 3,786 in April. That sum buys about four basic food baskets in large cities like São Paulo. According to IBGE analysts cited by Folha de S.Paulo, the stability in earnings reflects strong hiring in construction, where entry-level wages tend to be lower than in other sectors.

$2.45 billion: that is the total amount Brazilian travelers spent overseas in July 2026, according to Central Bank data published on Thursday. For ordinary households, a weaker US dollar made flight tickets and hotel bookings more affordable during the mid-year school holidays.The total exceeds 12.4 billion reais, equivalent to over eight million monthly Brazilian minimum wages. The spending marks the highest level for any July since the Central Bank began tracking records in 1995, surpassing the previous record of $2.41 billion set in July 2014.With the dollar ending July at 5.06 reais, down 7.64% this year, international credit card bills and foreign currency purchases became noticeably cheaper than last year. Over the first seven months of 2026, overseas expenses totaled $15.1 billion, also an all-time record for the period.Understand: travel expenses are part of the current account, the official ledger tracking all money moving into and out of Brazil through trade, services, and financial remittances. When Brazilian tourists spend abroad, the country registers a net outflow of foreign currency, directly affecting national external accounts.Despite increased travel outlays, Brazil's overall current account deficit fell 9.6% from January to July, totaling $35.97 billion. Meanwhile, foreign direct investment reached $54.44 billion over the same period, more than enough to finance that shortfall.

The number of the week is 49.8%. That is the slice of Brazilian households' annual income now committed to debt in 2026, the highest level in the Central Bank's historical series. In practice, a family earning R$60,000 a year owes, on average, almost R$30,000.The picture looks dissonant. Households' disposable income hit a record R$822 billion in May, and unemployment fell to 5.4%, close to an all-time low. Still, debt and defaults keep rising, according to the Central Bank.Against this backdrop, the Central Bank said on Wednesday (26), in a statement from its Financial Stability Committee (Comef), that it is preparing measures to mitigate credit risk. The text points to the weight of the most expensive credit lines in household debt and says the goal is to "strengthen the sustainability of credit and the resilience of the financial system".Two days earlier, at the opening of Febraban Tech, a banking industry event in São Paulo, Central Bank president Gabriel Galípolo had already said he is studying tools to curb household leverage, with "smooth and progressive" changes. He was blunt: "You cannot celebrate the news that credit grew and then complain that debt grew".The bill lands in the consumer's pocket. Brazil has 96 million credit card users, 57% of the adult population, and 52.8 million of them pay interest on revolving balances (the part of the bill left unpaid) or on installments. The average revolving rate reaches 15.1% a month: someone who owes R$1,000 pays about R$151 in interest in a single month, the price of a week's grocery run.Other credit lines are running even looser. Private payroll-deducted loans grew 145% in one year, to R$102 billion, and unsecured personal credit has jumped 188% since 2020, to R$397.2 billion, with rates of up to 149.5% a year. At that rate, a R$1,000 debt becomes almost R$2,500 in twelve months.UnderstandMacroprudential measures are Central Bank rules aimed at the financial system as a whole. In practice, the BC can force banks to keep more money parked with it (the reserve requirement known as compulsório), demand more capital for risky loans or make credit more expensive through taxes such as the IOF, a levy on financial transactions. The idea is to cool lending before defaults become a problem for the system.It is the lack of detail that bothers the market. In a report, Swiss bank UBS says Galípolo's remarks add uncertainty to the banking sector, because it is unclear which tool will be used. UBS notes that credit to individuals is growing about 11% a year, a pace it does not see as excessive, and that reserve requirements sit near record lows, which would leave room for an increase.The report cites the precedent of 2011, when the Central Bank raised capital requirements for longer-term loans and the government lifted the IOF on consumer credit from about 1.5% to 3% a year. Even while cautious, UBS kept buy recommendations on Nubank, Bradesco, Itaúsa and Inter.The Central Bank tried to calm nerves. According to Comef, banks hold capital and liquidity above requirements, and "provisions for credit losses and liquidity and capital levels remain adequate". For the committee, the financial system is prepared for the materialization of credit risk.

R$ 3.9 billion. That was the recurring net profit of Caixa Econômica Federal, Brazil's state-owned mortgage giant, in the second quarter, up 5.9% from the same period of 2025, the bank reported on Wednesday (26). Recurring profit is the earnings from the bank's normal operations, stripped of one-off events.In practice, Caixa made about R$ 43 million per day between April and June. Every 24 hours, the bank pocketed the equivalent of more than 26,000 monthly minimum wages, currently R$ 1,621. A year earlier, quarterly profit was roughly R$ 3.7 billion.The engine behind the result was the credit portfolio, the bank's stock of loans and financing, which reached R$ 1.4 trillion, up 11.9% in 12 months, according to Folha. Lending to individuals rose 8.7%, to R$ 156.5 billion, while corporate lending grew 6.5%, to R$ 113.9 billion. With more credit on the street, the net interest margin (what is left between the interest the bank charges and what it pays savers and investors) rose 20.2%, to R$ 19.7 billion.In home loans, Caixa's core business, the outstanding balance hit R$ 1.005 trillion, up 15% in 12 months, according to Valor. The bank holds 67.7% of Brazil's housing finance market, and 61.5% of those loans are funded by the FGTS, a compulsory severance fund that employers pay into every month on behalf of workers.Loss provisions nearly doubleThe context: every bank must set aside money for loans that may never be repaid, known as provisions. A Central Bank rule now requires banks to reserve even for losses that have not happened yet, but are expected. Because of that, Caixa said, its provisions jumped 97.6% in one year, to R$ 7 billion.The effect shows up in profitability. ROE (return on equity, how much the bank earns on its own capital) fell 2.7 percentage points, to 9.16%. In the mortgage book, defaults over 90 days rose from 1.26% to 1.45%: of every R$ 100 lent, R$ 1.45 is now overdue.Funding grew as well. Savings deposits at Caixa total R$ 405.6 billion, up 3.9% in 12 months. LCIs (real estate credit notes, a tax-free investment for individuals) jumped 21.8%, to R$ 271 billion.

Brazil's federal public debt reached R$9.28 trillion in July, up 0.22% from R$9.26 trillion in June, according to figures released Wednesday by the National Treasury Secretariat. In practical terms, this is what the federal government owes to holders of its bonds, debt that every taxpayer helps cover, whether through taxes paid now or in years to come.Almost all of July's increase came from interest costs: R$85.53 billion was added to the debt simply from interest accruing on bonds already issued. That was partly offset by what the Treasury calls a net redemption of R$65.14 billion, meaning it paid back more bonds than it issued during the month.Quick explainer: Brazil's federal public debt is money the National Treasury, part of the Finance Ministry, borrows to cover the gap between what the government collects in taxes and contributions and what it spends. When spending outpaces revenue, the Treasury issues bonds, sold to investors in Brazil and abroad, promising to repay that money with interest later.Two other figures in the report show the debt's underlying condition. Its average maturity, the time before the government must refinance its bonds, edged up from 4.01 to 4.05 years, about two extra weeks of breathing room. The average cost of the debt over the past 12 months fell from 12.68% a year in June to 12.45% in July, a rate still steep enough to resemble what many Brazilians pay on a car loan.The Treasury's liquidity reserve, cash set aside specifically to cover future debt payments, rose 1.89% in July to R$1.37 trillion, up from R$1.34 trillion in June. Compared with July 2025, when the reserve stood at R$988.35 billion, that marks nominal growth of 38.74%, a far thicker cushion than a year earlier.For the end of 2026, the Treasury projects total debt will land between R$9.7 trillion and R$10.3 trillion. The agency also revised its Annual Financing Plan (PAF), released the same day: it now expects 49% to 53% of the debt stock to consist of floating-rate bonds, whose interest tracks Brazil's benchmark Selic rate and moves up or down with it, at the expense of fixed-rate and inflation-linked securities.

R$0.44 (about $0.08) per liter. That is what Brazil's federal government will keep paying gasoline producers and importers until September 9 to hold down pump prices. In practice, public money is covering part of what drivers would otherwise pay out of pocket.The extension was signed by Finance Minister Dario Durigan in an order published in the government's official gazette, according to G1. Newspaper O Globo confirmed the report and added that the provisional measure underpinning the subsidy expires on that same September 9 date, forcing the government to decide whether to renew the benefit through another legal mechanism.The basics: the "subvencao" is a direct subsidy. When international oil prices rise, Petrobras and other fuel distributors normally pass part of that increase on to gasoline sold at service stations. To keep that increase from hitting drivers in full, the Treasury pays producers and importers a set amount per liter, holding down the final price at the pump.The subsidy has been in place since May 25 and has already cost public coffers roughly R$2.4 billion (about $430 million) in just over two months, according to O Globo. To put that in perspective, that sum is equivalent to more than 400,000 monthly minimum wages in Brazil. Days after the subsidy began in May, Petrobras raised the wholesale price of gasoline sold to distributors by R$0.48 per liter, but the actual increase felt by consumers was only R$0.04, precisely because of the subsidy, G1 reported.The same order also extended, until September 9, a separate subsidy of R$1.12 per liter of diesel, used for the same purpose, O Globo reported. Officials cite volatility in oil prices, now around $85 a barrel amid the conflict in the Middle East, as the justification for both measures. That same instability led Brazil's National Energy Policy Council in July to raise the mandatory blend of anhydrous ethanol in gasoline to 32%, another move aimed at easing inflationary pressure on fuel, according to G1.

More than 100 million Brazilians, nearly half the country's population, could qualify for a debt renegotiation program if Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro and a candidate for the PL party, wins Brazil's 2026 presidential election. The promise came from Daniella Marques, the campaign's economic adviser and a former president of Caixa Econômica Federal, Brazil's state-run bank, in an interview with the Folha de S.Paulo videocast C-Level.According to Marques, Brazilian households currently spend about 40% of their monthly income just to service debt. In practice, that means two out of every five reais a family earns is gone before it even covers rent, groceries or gas.Quick explainer: a fiscal rule, known in Brazil as a "regra fiscal," is the set of laws that caps how much a government can spend each year, so public debt does not grow faster than the economy. Brazil adopted a spending cap in 2016, the rule was loosened toward the end of Jair Bolsonaro's presidency, and it was replaced in 2023, under Lula, by the current fiscal framework.Marques said Flávio has committed to proposing a transition constitutional amendment, known in Brazil as a PEC, that would bring the executive, legislative and judicial branches together to restrain spending equivalent to 1.5% of gross domestic product. She did not explain how that reduction would be divided among ministries and programs, and her tone sharpened when pressed on how the proposal would actually work."Congress will be the one to work out the details, that is what will come out of there and define it. I'm not a fortune teller," she said, using a Brazilian expression that references a well-known television psychic.On the debt trajectory, Marques compared the two administrations: Jair Bolsonaro's government took office with debt at 75.27% of GDP and left it at 71.67%, she said, while under the Workers' Party it reached nearly 82% by June 2026. That growth, she argued, has outpaced the economy itself, like a credit card bill that climbs faster every month than the paycheck meant to cover it.Marques also said Brazil now has the world's highest real interest rate, which she linked to a wave of corporate bankruptcy filings: more than 6,000 companies entered judicial or extrajudicial recovery or bankruptcy this half of the year, compared with fewer than 1,500 during the pandemic, when much of the economy was shut down. She rejected comparisons to Desenrola, the debt renegotiation program run by the Lula government, calling it something that "does not work."As of this report, the interview had been published only by Folha de S.Paulo, and the proposals detailed by Marques had not yet been confirmed by other independent outlets.

Brazil's IPCA-15 inflation preview index fell 0.4% in August, according to data released Wednesday by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). It is the sharpest monthly drop for the indicator in four years, since August 2022, when it fell 0.73%.The decline was driven mainly by a temporary discount on electricity bills tied to a bonus from the Itaipu hydroelectric dam, which took effect in August. According to Folha de S.Paulo, airfares, food and fuel prices also fell during the month, helping pull the index down after it had risen 0.06% in July. G1 corroborated the report, noting the decline was led by housing, transportation and food costs, with electricity, airfares and fuel getting cheaper; among food items, tomatoes, potatoes and carrots saw the steepest price drops.August's deflation is the index's first in a year, since August 2025, when the IPCA-15 fell 0.14%. The result also surprised financial markets: the median estimate compiled by Bloomberg and cited by Folha had pointed to a 0.32% decline.Annual pace slowsDespite the monthly deflation, the IPCA-15 still shows a 12-month accumulated increase, though at a slower pace: the annual rate eased to 4.24% through August, down from 4.52% through July. With the new reading, the index dropped below the 4.5% ceiling of the inflation target pursued by Brazil's Central Bank for the IPCA, the country's official inflation gauge, something that had not happened since April.The IPCA-15 serves as an early preview of the IPCA, which the IBGE releases later, and tends to signal a trend for the official index. One key difference is the price-collection window: the August IPCA-15 covered the period from July 16 to August 14, while the IPCA survey runs through the full reference month. The IBGE will release the official August IPCA figure on September 11.For context, the IPCA is the rate Brazil's Central Bank uses to set interest-rate policy, similar to the CPI in the United States. Economists had already expected the IPCA-15 deflation because of the Itaipu bonus, according to Folha. The relief is considered temporary and is expected to reverse in coming months once the electricity discount's effect drops out of the index's comparison base.

Brazil and the United States will resume technical negotiations on Monday, August 31, over the tariffs Washington imposed on Brazilian products, according to Brazilian outlet CartaCapital. Brazil's Minister of Development, Industry, Trade and Services, Márcio Elias Rosa, and the United States Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, will hold a virtual meeting at 2:30 p.m. Brasília time. The minister confirmed the meeting, which marks the first step in a new round of talks between the two governments.The meeting was arranged after an exchange of messages between Rosa and Greer, which followed a phone call between Brazilian President Lula and US President Donald Trump on Friday, August 21. The two leaders spoke for about an hour and twenty minutes, focusing mainly on tariffs. According to the Brazilian government, Lula pushed for a resumption of negotiations and argued the measures hurt both countries' economies. Trump, for his part, agreed on the need to preserve trade relations and said technical teams should resume talks.Brazil's first goal in the renewed talks will be to expand the list of Brazilian products exempt from the additional tariffs. Only in a second phase does the government intend to discuss reversing the measures themselves. The two delegations had already met before but failed to reach an understanding. Since the tariffs were announced, the Brazilian government says there have been more than 30 contacts with US officials at various levels.How the tariffs workThe United States imposed two rounds of additional tariffs on Brazilian goods this year. One added 25% on part of Brazil's exports, following a US trade investigation that found Brazilian practices it deemed harmful to bilateral commerce, including issues related to Pix, Brazil's instant payment system, and the regulation of digital platforms. A second tariff of 12.5% was announced later. Combined, the two levies pushed the additional tariff on some products to 37.5% to enter the US market.Not every product is affected, though. Oil, coffee and beef are among the items excluded from the additional tariffs, while footwear, machinery, timber and sugar remain subject to the maximum rate. Brazil's current strategy is to widen that list of exceptions and reduce the impact on its exports before pursuing a broader rollback of the tariffs.

The São Paulo State Court of Justice (TJ-SP) may decide this Wednesday afternoon (26) whether the map behind São Paulo city's zoning law overhaul, in effect since 2024, stays in place or gets struck down, according to newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. The special panel's session starts at 1:30 p.m. local time, with the case 36th on the agenda.The lawsuit, a direct constitutional challenge, was filed by the Attorney General's Office of the São Paulo state prosecutor's office (MP-SP), which has questioned Municipal Law 18.081/2024 since earlier this year. In February, appellate judge Luis Fernando Nishi already granted an injunction suspending permits for demolitions, tree removal and new construction across the city, ruling that the legislative process behind the law fell short on public participation and technical planning requirements. According to Brazilian outlet G1, the judge wrote that the challenged law contains flaws that prevent its existence, given that basic rules of community participation in the legislative process were not observed.That injunction froze thousands of pending applications at the city's Urban Planning and Licensing Department: according to newspaper Estadão, 4,459 permit requests were held up, including 1,363 tied to subsidized and affordable housing projects. In April, however, Justice Edson Fachin of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Brazil's highest court, granted a separate injunction favoring the City Council and the mayor's office, restoring the law's validity until TJ-SP issues a final ruling, as reported by Veja São Paulo magazine. The City Council had argued the freeze threatened as many as 197,000 construction jobs and roughly 90 billion reais (about 17 billion dollars) in investment.What the merits ruling could changeFolha reported that the appellate judges may apply what Brazilian courts call modulação, a legal mechanism to limit the retroactive effects of a ruling, if they find the MP-SP's challenge valid. That could mean the decision would not apply to already-approved developments, or could even keep the current zoning map in force until city council members pass a replacement law, within a deadline still to be set. The City Council itself proposed that approach in a document sent to the court in late March, citing a similar 2021 ruling on zoning legislation in Louveira, a town in the São Paulo countryside.Data the mayor's office submitted to the court shows the scale of the change: the revised map altered zoning for 293,591 lots, 7.5% of the city's total, and affected 3,992 blocks, or 6% of the total. Among the changes challenged by prosecutors, some of which the city's own technical staff had flagged for rejection, are expanded high-rise development corridors in blocks that do not meet the zoning law's own criteria, and the legalization of unauthorized subdivisions inside environmentally protected areas, as Folha had previously reported.Any transition period built into the ruling would aim to protect permits, administrative acts and projects already finished or under construction since the law took effect, heading off a wave of litigation that could hit thousands of properties. Wednesday's ruling is expected to determine whether the zoning overhaul, which reshaped land use rules across Brazil's largest city, stands as written or must be redone by the City Council.

The five best-polling candidates in Brazil's October presidential election identify the country's high interest rate as one of the main obstacles to economic growth in their government programs and defend a fiscal adjustment as the way to bring it down. A survey by G1 of the plans registered with the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) shows, however, that the proposals lay out the general lines of that adjustment while giving few details on how to carry it out. The first round is scheduled for October 4.The campaigns' diagnosis is similar to that of private-sector analysts: Brazil's public debt is at its highest level since the pandemic, real interest rates are the highest in the world and the country has not posted recurring, sustained primary surpluses since 2013. According to G1, the programs also include generic references to reforming mandatory spending, measures that are traditionally unpopular and politically complex to implement. The survey examined the programs of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), Ronaldo Caiado (PSD), Renan Santos (Missão) and Romeu Zema (Novo).What the plans sayIn the program of Lula, who is seeking a fourth term, his coalition says the economy grew an average of 3% a year in recent years and argues that "the interest rate is today what inflation was in Brazil's past: it concentrates income and disorganizes our economy". The text says the government made an "enormous fiscal effort" of about 2% of GDP, or R$ 240 billion, between 2023 and 2026, and signals a gradual adjustment of similar intensity in a new term. The plan keeps the arcabouço fiscal, the 2023 fiscal framework that bars spending from growing faster than revenue and caps real spending growth at 2.5% a year. Analysts criticize the rule's exceptions, which have pushed spending higher, and say the minimum wage appreciation policy kept in the program makes the adjustment harder because it is linked to pension spending. The program also promises to fight the abusive hiring of workers as companies and to press the Senate to end the six-days-on, one-day-off work scale known as 6x1, cutting the workweek to 40 hours without pay reductions, as approved in the lower house.The coalition of Flávio Bolsonaro promises a more intense adjustment, described in the program as a "big scissor cut", with a "deep cut from all sides that slims down the machine". The goal is, "with the accounts in order", to achieve "lower interest rates"."We will present an overhaul of the current fiscal rules, with clear rules focused on stabilizing and reducing the public debt as the Constitution determines. We will build lasting fiscal balance, delivering primary surpluses and limiting subsidized credit with Treasury funds", says the excerpt of the PL program, which also provides for a rule controlling discretionary spending by the three branches of government.The plan of the PL candidate also includes cutting taxes on energy and fuels "so families have money left at the end of the month". G1 points out that lower revenue makes the fiscal adjustment harder.Caiado said in an interview with Globo on Tuesday (25) that, if elected, he will send Congress a constitutional amendment on his first day in office capping the growth of federal spending at inflation plus 50% of GDP growth. The former governor of Goiás called the current fiscal framework a "big sham" and defended an administrative reform to cut spending and "extortionate salaries" in the Executive, the Legislature, the Judiciary and the federal audit court. Asked about the calculations behind the target, he asked for "calm": "A patient was run over by a bus. Which points will you prioritize? Well, I have not even examined the patient."Folha de S.Paulo has also begun examining the economic programs of the same five candidates, in a series of interviews with campaign spokespeople that include Finance Minister Dario Durigan, from Lula's campaign, and former Caixa president Daniella Marques, an adviser to Flávio Bolsonaro. "The presidential candidates present quite different economic models for the country. It is necessary to scrutinize these promises with real-world data, so voters can tell what is mere propaganda from what is actually part of a feasible political project", said Mariana Carneiro, the newspaper's Brasília bureau managing editor.

Brazil's securities regulator, the CVM (Comissao de Valores Mobiliarios, equivalent to the US SEC), unanimously approved on Tuesday (25th), by a 3-0 vote, a mandatory tender offer for shares of cancer treatment network Oncoclinicas. The board's decision overruled the agency's own technical staff, who had twice recommended against requiring the offer, according to Folha de S.Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo.The dispute pits American investment firm Centaurus Capital against Brazilian fund Latache, Oncoclinicas' majority shareholder. Under the company's bylaws, any investor whose stake exceeds 15% after the firm's IPO must launch a tender offer giving other shareholders the option to sell their shares. Centaurus, which now holds about 16.05% of the company through a fund called Josephina 3, argues its position dates back to 2018 and should not trigger the rule, according to Estadao. Latache, Oncoclinicas' largest individual shareholder with 14.6% of the capital, has been one of the main advocates for the mandatory offer.According to Estadao/Broadcast, the transaction could cost Centaurus up to 6 billion reais (roughly 1.1 billion dollars). CVM chairman Otto Lobo and directors Joao Accioly and Igor Muniz voted in favor of the offer. Director Marina Copola was recused from the case.Fund already turns to arbitrationHours after the ruling, Josephina 3, the vehicle through which Centaurus holds its Oncoclinicas stake, issued a statement disagreeing with the board. The fund noted that the CVM's technical staff had already recommended rejecting the offer on two separate occasions.The Arbitration Tribunal of B3's Market Arbitration Chamber (CAM) is the body with exclusive jurisdiction to resolve this commercial dispute between shareholders of a publicly traded company, which is why Josephina 3 initiated arbitration proceedings before CAM last week, the fund said in its statement.According to Estadao, Latache, Centaurus and Oncoclinicas itself did not respond to requests for comment on the decision. The case now moves forward on two parallel tracks: execution of the tender offer ordered by the CVM, and the arbitration case already filed by the Centaurus-linked fund at B3's chamber before the board even issued its ruling.Roots in a Goldman Sachs fund restructuringAccording to reporting by Estadao, the dispute traces back to a restructuring of funds that held stakes in Oncoclinicas. Goldman Sachs, a shareholder in the network since 2015, held its investment through structures called Josephina I and II, in which Centaurus had an indirect stake. Due to internal bank rules limiting proprietary stakes above 5% to a maximum of ten years, Goldman Sachs decided in late 2024 to reduce its exposure, creating the Josephina 3 fund and effectively raising Centaurus' stake in Oncoclinicas to around 16%. The case is one of the most closely watched by the market this year and the highest-profile so far under CVM chairman Otto Lobo, who took over the agency's presidency in June.

Brazilian asset manager Squadra Investimentos described its bet on shares of health insurer Hapvida as the biggest investment mistake in its history, according to a letter sent to fund shareholders on Tuesday and reported by outlets including Valor Econômico, NeoFeed and Estadão. The firm, known for activist positions in Brazil's stock market, also said it had cut its stake in the healthcare operator.According to NeoFeed, Squadra trimmed its Hapvida holding by about 1.3 percentage points, bringing its stake to 3.87%. The cut comes just months after the firm won election of three board members at the company following a public push for governance changes. Other outlets, including InfoMoney and the site Analistas LTDA, reported that Squadra's position in Hapvida had fallen to around 1%, suggesting further selling in the days that followed the initial reduction.In the letter to shareholders, a portion of which was reproduced by the site BP Money, Squadra acknowledged the toll the investment took on its results. "It scratched our performance track record and cost our investors' capital dearly," the firm said, according to the outlet.A governance campaignSquadra had been pushing for months for changes on Hapvida's board and management. In an earlier letter to the company, the firm went as far as describing the stock's decline as one of the biggest value destructions in the history of Brazil's stock exchange, according to Folha de Pernambuco. That campaign culminated in the election of three Squadra-backed board members, a win that, months later, did not stop the firm from acknowledging its investment thesis had failed.Hapvida shares (HAPV3) fell as much as 4.7% on Tuesday, according to Reuters, amid the fallout from Squadra's letter. The stock is down 56.9% for the year, pulling Hapvida's market value to roughly 3.16 billion reais (about 600 million dollars), according to NeoFeed. For readers unfamiliar with the Brazilian market, Hapvida is one of the country's largest health insurance and hospital network operators, serving millions of beneficiaries across Brazil.After admitting the mistake, Squadra redirected part of its portfolio. According to the site Seu Dinheiro and Analistas LTDA, the firm placed Brazilian depositary receipts of MercadoLibre (MELI34) and Nubank (ROXO34) among its biggest bets, alongside positions in utility companies such as Equatorial and Energisa and in oil producer PRIO.

Romeu Zema, the presidential candidate of the Novo party, said on Monday (24) that, if elected, he will carry out a fiscal adjustment to bring Brazil's benchmark interest rate, the Selic, down from the current 14% to 6% a year, without detailing the measures he would take. In an interview with TV Globo at the broadcaster's studios in Rio de Janeiro, the former governor of Minas Gerais also defended amnesty for those convicted over the January 8, 2023 riots and called the trials held by the Supreme Federal Court (STF) "clearly political", according to g1.Zema was the first candidate interviewed in the network's series with presidential hopefuls ahead of the October election, broadcast live after the Jornal Nacional newscast and conducted by journalists Renata Vasconcellos and César Tralli. Globo invited the six best-placed candidates in a Quaest poll published on August 14, with the order set by a draw.Interest at 6% and the minimum wageSpeaking about his economic proposals, Zema said the priority of an eventual government of his would be lower interest rates. "With a serious government, with credibility, fighting corruption and fraud, this rate falls to 6%. That alone would save us R$ 800 billion a year", he said. The candidate did not explain, however, what the fiscal adjustment would consist of or how he would bring down the Selic, which is set by the Central Bank.On the minimum wage, the candidate guaranteed it would at least keep up with inflation. "I guarantee nobody will have a loss. If there is inflation, we will pay all of the inflation", he said. A raise above inflation, though, would depend on a strong economic performance.The first question of the interview was about the public debt of Minas Gerais, which nearly doubled during Zema's almost eight years as governor. He replied that the problem was "inherited from the 1990s" and blamed the interest charged by the federal government. "I paid R$ 23 billion to retirees who were not receiving their pensions. I paid R$ 13 billion to the federal government, to public servants, and today the debt represents much less for the economy of Minas than it did when I took office", he said. Zema also said he took office with a R$ 11 billion deficit in 2018 and left with a R$ 5 billion surplus.A check by g1's Fato ou Fake team rated the surplus claim as "not quite so". According to the fact-checkers, the R$ 5.1 billion positive balance refers to 2024 and was boosted by extraordinary revenue from the Mariana and Brumadinho dam-collapse settlement agreements. At the end of 2025, Zema's last full year in office, the surplus was R$ 1.1 billion, and the state finance secretariat projects a R$ 5 billion deficit for 2026.Amnesty for January 8 convictsZema said that, if elected, he will grant amnesty to those convicted over the January 8, 2023 attacks, when supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed and vandalized the seats of the three branches of government in Brasília. In his view, those involved should be punished for vandalism and depredation, and there are courts in Brazil "doing more politics than actual justice"."I will grant amnesty or, at the very least, a court that is not political, a court that is judicial", Zema said.According to O Antagonista, the candidate extended the promise to former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted by the STF. "There is no coup attempt in the history of humankind that was a vandalism movement like that of January 2023. What we saw was persecution", Zema said, citing the case of "a girl who stained public property with lipstick".On other topics, Zema said he trusts Brazil's electronic voting machines, although he defended adding printed receipts as an "improvement", and said security measures adopted by El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele could be adapted to Brazil "within our law", while disagreeing with the suspension of rights. According to Revista Oeste, he also defended privatizing federal state-owned companies such as Petrobras, Banco do Brasil and Caixa, and said he is against mandatory vaccination of children.Globo's interview series continues on Tuesday (25) with Ronaldo Caiado (PSD). Renan Santos (Missão) speaks on Wednesday (26), President Lula (PT) on Thursday (27), Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) on Friday (28) and Augusto Cury (Avante) on Saturday (29).

Rental prices for commercial properties of up to 200 square meters rose 11.26% in Brazil over the last 12 months, according to the FipeZap Commercial Index for July 2026, released on Tuesday (25). The increase is well above official inflation as measured by the IPCA index (4.44%) and more than four times the variation of the IGP-M (2.76%), the price index traditionally used to adjust rental contracts in Brazil, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported.Sale prices told a different story. The average asking price for these units rose only 2.05% in 12 months, below inflation, which means a loss of value in real terms on the national average. The index puts the average sale price at R$ 8,792 per square meter and the average rent at R$ 53.68 per square meter.All ten cities tracked by the indicator recorded rent increases over the period. Rio de Janeiro leads with a rise of 21.34%, followed by Salvador (18.86%), Curitiba (12.85%), Belo Horizonte (8.79%), São Paulo (7.82%) and Brasília (7.66%). In São Paulo, the largest market in the sample, the average rent reached R$ 61.74 per square meter in July, while the average sale price stood at R$ 10,602 per square meter, up just 1.94% in 12 months."These differences reinforce the importance of looking at the local market before making a decision to buy, sell or rent. More than the national average, factors such as demand, property availability and the economic dynamics of each city help determine price behavior," Mariangela Silva, an economist at Grupo OLX, told Folha.The gap between rents and purchase prices raised the projected return for investors who buy commercial units for income. The segment's average rental yield reached 7.59% per year in July, above the 6.14% estimated for residential properties, though still below the projected return on financial investments, according to the report.Despite the accumulated increase, the monthly pace has slowed. According to real estate portal Portas, which also covered the index, monthly commercial rent growth fell from 1.38% in June to 0.56% in July, with a cumulative rise of 7.42% so far in 2026.

Shares of Braskem, one of Brazil's largest petrochemical companies, closed down 6.71% on Monday (24) at R$ 4.73, the day the company filed for an out-of-court restructuring (recuperação extrajudicial, a court-supervised debt renegotiation that avoids formal bankruptcy) to rework roughly US$ 10.9 billion (R$ 56 billion) in debt. B3, the São Paulo stock exchange, announced that Braskem's shares will be removed from 18 of its indices, including the benchmark Ibovespa.The exclusion covers both common (BRKM3) and preferred (BRKM5) shares and takes effect after the close of regular trading on Tuesday (25), at the closing price. According to B3, the move follows the reclassification of the shares under the "extrajudicial recovery" designation. Besides the Ibovespa, Braskem will leave the theoretical portfolios of IGCX, ICO2, IBXX, IMAT, IGCT, IBRA, INDX, ISEE, ITAG, IBHB, IBEP, IBEW, IBBE, IBBC, SMLL, IBBR and SCSR, with its weight redistributed proportionally among the remaining assets in each index.Shares keep trading, but index funds must sellBraskem's shares will continue to be listed and traded normally on B3. What changes is that they leave the indices' theoretical portfolios, which forces index and pension funds that track those baskets to sell the stock. "When B3 removes a company from that basket, everyone who follows the index has to sell the paper, not because they assessed the company, but because the fund's rulebook requires it," Matheus Matos, partner at MA7 Capital, told G1.Analysts interviewed by G1 said the index exclusion is a side effect of the restructuring itself. "Although this move is negative, its impact tends to be secondary given the complex and delicate scenario the company faces," said Rodrigo Boselli, equity manager at Rio Bravo Investimentos. For Gustavo Assis, CEO of Asset Wealth Management, "the index exclusion is a consequence of this scenario, not the origin of the problem."The petition was filed with the 2nd Bankruptcy and Judicial Recovery Court of São Paulo, backed by creditors representing 39.6% of the claims covered by the restructuring, above the one-third minimum required by Brazilian law. The filing opens a 90-day protection period during which Braskem will negotiate with creditors to reach the simple majority needed to approve the plan."Braskem clarifies that the out-of-court recovery has a limited, strictly financial scope and does not cover any obligations of the company with its suppliers, clients and other stakeholders, which remain in force and continue to be honored as usual," the company said in a statement.According to InfoMoney, the plan provides for an extension of debt maturities, the capitalization of interest during a financial relief period and the possible conversion of part of the claims into shares. The move has the support of Braskem's main shareholders, Novonor (through the Shine fund) and state-controlled Petrobras. The restructuring runs in parallel with that of Mexican subsidiary Braskem Idesa, which sought Chapter 11 protection in the United States.

Brazil's Central Bank president, Gabriel Galípolo, warned on Monday (24) about the growth of expensive, unsecured credit lines at a time of high household indebtedness. According to G1, the recent rise in debt has been driven mainly by credit used for consumption and fixed expenses, a trend that concerns the monetary authority. He spoke at the opening of Febraban Tech 2026, a financial technology event held by Febraban, the federation of Brazilian banks.According to Valor Econômico, Galípolo said it was not the high benchmark interest rate, now at 14.75% a year, that caused households' over-indebtedness, but the expansion of credit supply, fueled in part by official credit policy. The remark answers sectors of the government and the ruling Workers' Party that blame the Central Bank's monetary tightening for the strain on family budgets despite low unemployment and real wage gains. In his view, the relationship works the other way: when the Selic rate is lower, indebtedness grows; when rates are high, credit slows. He presented a chart linking the rise in indebtedness from 2020 to the banking inclusion spurred by Pix, the instant payment system run by the Central Bank, to historically low rates and to credit support programs created in the pandemic and kept in the following years. "You cannot be happy because credit grew and then complain that indebtedness grew," he summed up.Indebtedness kept rising even as the labor market improved. In June, unemployment fell to 5.4%, the lowest level for the period, and in May households' disposable income hit a record R$ 822 billion, according to G1. Galípolo also displayed an excerpt of the Monetary Policy Report attributing the recent increase to non-earmarked credit, with rising arrears in vehicle financing, non-payroll personal loans and private payroll-deducted credit. Created for formally employed workers, the payroll loan known as consignado CLT, with installments deducted straight from wages, was the biggest recent driver of household credit: since its launch in March 2025, the outstanding balance jumped from R$ 41 billion to R$ 102 billion.For Galípolo, the concern goes beyond the size of the debt and reaches the type of credit contracted, as G1 reported:"Not every kind of indebtedness is a problem. Buying a house, for example, creates an asset. The problem is when debt is used for something that does not turn into an asset, especially when it involves high interest rates."Credit cards under scrutinyGalípolo also defended regulatory changes to correct incentives that, in his assessment, allowed credit card operations to grow too fast. The data presented at the event show that 37 million Brazilians started using credit cards between 2020 and 2024. Over the same period, users carrying interest-bearing debt rose from 34 million to 52.8 million, the share of income committed to cards went from 38.5% to 54%, and default jumped from 55% to 64.5%. According to Valor, the Central Bank is reviewing card rules to promote responsible lending and fix distortions in a model where long payment terms for full-payment purchases and interest-free installments benefit high-income clients, while the costs are passed on through higher interest to low-income families. He gave no details, but mentioned macroprudential tools and international experience.At the same event, the Central Bank chief celebrated Brazilians' high trust in Pix, shown in a Quaest poll cited at the presentation: 80% say they trust the payment system, ahead of the Catholic Church (76%) and the Armed Forces (70%), while 70% say they trust their own spouse. "First place as an institution... and the spouse in fifth. That worries me," he joked. According to a Central Bank study, Pix is already used by 148 million individuals, equivalent to 86% of the adult population, and by 12.8 million companies.

Brazil's social security agency, the INSS, said on Monday (24) that retirees and pensioners who do not have facial biometrics registered in government databases will be able to take out payroll-deducted loans, known locally as consignado, by validating their bank account details. The rule is set out in a normative instruction from the agency and is already in force, according to a report by news portal G1, which cited an official statement.When a beneficiary logs in, state IT company Dataprev checks whether a biometric record exists in government databases. If none is found, the system allows access through the federal Gov.br portal and validates the user's banking data, which then serves as authentication in the Meu INSS app to authorize loan contracts. The agency said facial biometrics remains the main way to access this type of credit, and the change should extend the service to people without a biometric record."In practice, the change prevents the lack of a biometric record from blocking access to the loan. Bank data authentication becomes an alternative for these people, while the express authorization of the benefit holder remains mandatory," the INSS said in a statement.Rule followed discount scandalThe biometrics requirement for payroll loans took effect in May this year, under a law passed in 2026. It was adopted to protect retirees and pensioners after a scandal over unauthorized deductions made by entities and associations from INSS pensions and retirement benefits. The Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), Brazil's public spending watchdog, had also recommended the use of biometrics to curb fraud.PortabilityThe new rule also covers loan portability, when a beneficiary moves the debt from one bank to another. The request is made to the destination bank and authorized through Meu INSS, either by biometrics or, without a biometric record, by bank data validation. Signing the Portability Authorization Form is still required.The originating bank has up to 20 days to confirm the operation. If it does not, the portability request is automatically cancelled.

Yduqs, the company behind the Estácio college network and one of Brazil's largest higher education groups, confirmed on Monday (24) that it is in talks with Afya about a possible combination of the two education companies. The confirmation came in a fato relevante, the material fact disclosure that Brazilian listed companies must file, a day after the newspaper Valor Econômico reported that executives of German group Bertelsmann, Afya's controlling shareholder, met with Yduqs representatives in São Paulo to start the discussions, with a new meeting already scheduled for September.In the filing, Yduqs says the talks "are at an early stage" and that there is so far "no agreement, contract or binding commitment" between the companies, their shareholders or their managers. According to Valor, the statement adds that "there is no guarantee that the talks will result in the signing of definitive documents or in the consummation of any transaction".The company says that, in the normal course of business, it continuously evaluates strategic opportunities and has always seen "structural merits" in consolidating the education sector as an important lever to generate value for shareholders.The news was well received by the market. Yduqs shares (YDUQ3) led gains on the Ibovespa, the main index of the São Paulo stock exchange, jumping about 13% to R$ 8.90, according to Folha. Afya's shares trade on New York's Nasdaq under the ticker AFYA.Yduqs, formerly known as Estácio, owns the Estácio, Wyden and IBMEC brands and ranks among Brazil's leading higher education companies. Afya, in turn, focuses on health education and has expanded through acquisitions, taking over schools and widening its presence in the medical school market across different regions of the country. A combination would join one of Brazil's largest higher education groups with a company specialized in medical courses.

Braskem, Latin America's largest petrochemical producer, confirmed on Monday (24) that its board approved filing for extrajudicial recovery, an out-of-court restructuring mechanism under Brazilian law, to renegotiate roughly US$ 10.9 billion (about R$ 56 billion) in financial obligations. According to Brazil Journal, the filing gives the company 90 days to negotiate with creditors and, for now, removes the threat of a court-supervised judicial recovery.In a notice to shareholders and the market, the company said the measure has a limited, strictly financial scope and does not cover obligations to suppliers, clients and other partners, whose contracts remain in force and continue to be honored."Once the relevant documents are formalized, it will file the extrajudicial recovery request, with the goal of ensuring a stable, protected and adequate legal environment for negotiating and implementing the restructuring of its unsecured financial obligations," the company said, in a statement quoted by CNN Brasil.Under Brazilian bankruptcy law, extrajudicial recovery lets a company negotiate directly with creditors and take the deal to court only for approval. If it fails to win enough support, the process can be converted into a judicial recovery, the Brazilian equivalent of Chapter 11.Stalemate with banksMonday's filing capped weeks of talks without a deal. According to CNN Brasil, the 2nd Bankruptcy and Judicial Recovery Court of São Paulo had granted an injunction shielding the petrochemical company from creditor enforcement for 60 days, a deadline that expired on Monday without an agreement. Banks demanded guarantees backed by Braskem's own assets and the contracting of a US$ 700 million loan, which the company refused. A proposal from one of its controlling shareholders, IG4, calls for extending current credit lines by five years with a 30-month interest grace period, with no cut to the principal and no debt-to-equity conversion. In June, rating agencies Fitch and S&P Global downgraded the company, citing its debt load.The weight of Maceió and the sector downturnAs g1 reports, Braskem's crisis combines the billion-real costs of the geological disaster in Maceió with a long stretch of thin margins in the global petrochemical industry and high indebtedness. The ground subsidence linked to rock salt mining, tied to the company by the Geological Survey of Brazil (CPRM) in 2019, caused one of the largest urban displacements in the country's history: more than 14,000 properties were evacuated and about 60,000 people were affected. Braskem has already paid out more than R$ 4.2 billion in compensation and relocation support for residents and shopkeepers, keeps R$ 3.24 billion provisioned for future costs, and signed agreements worth R$ 1.7 billion with the city of Maceió in 2023 and R$ 1.2 billion with the Alagoas state government in November 2025. In June, a federal court accepted criminal charges brought by federal prosecutors in the case, and the company's shares fell nearly 15% in that session.The international backdrop also weighs on the company. With China's industrial expansion, which added more than 18 million tonnes of annual production capacity in 2024, according to consultancy ICIS, resin prices fell, and Fitch projects weak petrochemical spreads at least through 2028. Braskem's recurring EBITDA totaled US$ 557 million in 2025, down 49% in one year, and net debt ended last year at US$ 7.5 billion, equivalent to 14.7 times cash generation, according to g1. The rise of Brazil's benchmark Selic rate, from 2% in 2020 to 15% in March 2026, raised the cost of servicing a debt partly denominated in foreign currency. Last week, Braskem Idesa, the company's Mexican joint venture, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Sunday (23) that his conversations with U.S. President Donald Trump are always "civilized and very respectful," but criticized what he called the "second tier" of the U.S. administration for taking "unthinkable actions." The remarks came in an interview with TV Record, recorded at the Palácio da Alvorada, the presidential residence in Brasília, two days after a phone call between the two leaders that unlocked a new round of negotiations over the U.S. tariff package on Brazilian goods — dubbed the tarifaço ("big tariff") in Brazil — according to G1."My conversation with Trump is very civilized, very respectful, on my part and on his. But afterwards, the second tier takes actions that are unthinkable. And we cannot accept interference from any country, whoever it may be, in Brazil's affairs."Lula also said he does not know whether the measures come from Trump himself or from his advisers. "Sometimes I have the impression that Trump is much better at the political relationship than his staff," he said in the interview.Phone call broke the deadlockLula called Trump on Friday morning (21). The conversation lasted about one hour and twenty minutes and had a "friendly and cordial" tone, according to the Planalto Palace. On the call, the Brazilian leader said the allegations used by Washington to justify the new tariffs — gathered in investigations by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), which cite issues such as deforestation, forced labor and Brazil's instant-payment system Pix — are "unfounded." To Record, Lula went further and said he told Trump the grounds for the measures "are lies." "We have the lowest deforestation in Brazil's history," he said, adding that Trump was "deep down" referring to China when he mentioned products made with slave labor.The effect was immediate. Still on Friday, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer contacted Brazil's Minister of Development, Industry, Trade and Services, Márcio Elias Rosa, and the two agreed to meet by videoconference next week. "Ambassador Greer himself reached out. He spoke to me, sent a message to my personal phone," the minister confirmed to CNN Brasil. In a statement, the Planalto said Trump agreed on "the need to preserve strong trade ties" and proposed that teams from both countries meet again "as soon as possible."According to sources heard by CNN Brasil, Trump asked Lula about Brazil's elections — the country votes in October — and Lula replied that the campaign is proceeding calmly and defended the integrity of the electoral system. Neither side mentioned members of the Bolsonaro family, Supreme Court justices, or the possibility of applying the Magnitsky Act again against Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the network reported."[The conversation] has already borne fruit, and I hope it is tasty, flavorful fruit, because I want to keep a very civilized relationship with the U.S.," Lula said, noting that the two countries share 203 years of diplomatic relations and are "the two largest democracies in the hemisphere." "We are two 80-year-old men and we have to set good examples for the rest of the world," he added.Background on the tariff packageIn July, the United States formalized an additional 25% tariff on a range of Brazilian products. About two-thirds of Brazilian export items ended up on exemption lists, but one-third remains surcharged, including sectors such as timber and machinery and equipment, according to São Paulo governor Tarcísio de Freitas, who told CNN on Saturday (22) that "negotiation cannot stop." Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said last month that Brazil and the U.S. had already held more than 30 meetings since March 2025 on the issue.

The phone call between Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and US President Donald Trump on Friday morning (August 21) shows that the relationship between the two leaders remains unshaken despite the tariff tensions between the two countries. That is the conclusion of an analysis by the Estadão newspaper, for which the roughly 80-minute conversation — described as "friendly and cordial" by the Planalto Palace, Brazil's presidential office — and its immediate fallout indicate that the direct channel between the two men remains open.During the call, Lula told Trump that the allegations used by Washington to justify the new tariffs on Brazilian products are "unfounded", according to G1. The barriers were imposed on the basis of investigations by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR). At a campaign event in Belo Horizonte over the weekend, Lula said Trump acknowledged the tariff hike was "incorrect" during the conversation and that, at the American's request, the US Commerce Secretary phoned Brazil's Development, Industry and Commerce minister, Marcio Elias Rosa, according to CNN Brasil.The call produced a concrete result, confirmed by the minister himself to journalist Julia Duailibi's blog: US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer contacted Marcio Elias Rosa right after Friday's conversation to propose a meeting, and Brazil and the United States are set to resume technical negotiations on the tariff package this week.Lula targets Trump's "second tier"In an interview with TV Record on Sunday (23), Lula drew a line between his dialogue with Trump and the measures adopted by the US administration. The president said the conversations are always "civilized and very respectful," but that the Republican's subordinates act differently:"My conversations with Trump are very civilized, very respectful, both on my part and on his. But then the second tier takes attitudes that are unthinkable. We cannot accept meddling by any country, whoever it may be, in Brazil's affairs."Lula also said he has "the impression" that Trump "is much better in political relations than his advisers." The reading dovetails with a Financial Times report published on Saturday (22), which said Lula has begun betting on a direct channel with Trump to bypass an "ideological wing" of the White House led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with whom he has traded public barbs in recent weeks — Rubio accused Lula of putting "his own ego" ahead of the Brazilian people's interests, and Lula called the diplomat a "frustrated Latin American," CNN Brasil reported. An analysis by the network also concluded that "there is no animosity from Trump toward Lula."The British newspaper heard conflicting accounts of the rapprochement: a US official said Lula was "fabricating" the feud with Rubio because he believes anti-American sentiment would help him defeat Flávio Bolsonaro in Brazil's October presidential election, while a Brazilian government official spoke of "a coordinated agenda between Brazil's right and the right inside the US State Department."Commenting on the call, Lula cited the 203 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries and said he and Trump, "two 80-year-old men," must "set good examples for the rest of the world" as leaders of the hemisphere's two largest democracies. Despite the Planalto's optimism about the reopened channel, CNN reported that members of the government have not ruled out attempts at electoral interference by US sectors.

Brazil's "split payment" system — the automatic tax collection mechanism at the heart of the country's landmark consumption tax reform — will not be operational in January 2027, when effective collection of the new CBS and IBS taxes begins. The announcement came from Pricilla Santana, finance secretary of Rio Grande do Sul state and second vice-president of the IBS Steering Committee, after the body's meeting on Wednesday, August 12, according to newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. "The split payment is one of the most complex tools to implement. It will not start in January," Santana said, adding that financial institutions themselves asked for more time to adapt. Under the model, banks and payment processors automatically separate the tax portion at the moment a transaction is settled. The company receives the sale amount, while the taxes go directly to Brazil's federal revenue service and to the steering committee formed by states and municipalities, without passing through the seller's account. According to Folha, the split payment will initially be optional and restricted to business-to-business transactions. Another optional mechanism will be available in 2027: the RAD (collection by the purchaser), under which the buyer pays the tax that is currently remitted by the supplier and has its tax credit automatically enabled, while the seller receives only the net amount. Operating the system will require unprecedented infrastructure. According to reporting by legal news outlet JOTA, a working group of the Finance Ministry, the federal comptroller's office (CGU) and the banks proposed paying financial institutions R$ 0.39 per processed operation. An estimated 229 payment institutions would need to join the model, processing between 1.3 and 1.5 billion transactions a year worth around R$ 6 trillion. The CGU, however, has challenged the proposal. It points to the lack of a methodology justifying the figure and notes that the payment would require Congress to approve a tax benefit, something barred by Brazil's fiscal framework after the primary deficit recorded in 2025. The mechanism has also drawn political fire. Still according to JOTA, opposition-linked figures, including Senate pre-candidate Carlos Bolsonaro, claim the split payment will squeeze companies' cash flow, since tax money will no longer pass through corporate accounts — ending the so-called "tax float," the gap between a sale and the tax payment that currently helps finance working capital. The steering committee, in turn, announced it will step up public communication to counter what it describes as disinformation about the reform. The tax reform, approved in 2024, replaces five existing taxes (PIS, Cofins, IPI, ICMS and ISS) with a dual VAT made up of the federal CBS and the state-and-municipal IBS. According to news portal G1, the technology platform that will run the new taxes — described by the government as many times larger than the Pix instant payment system — is being tested in 2026 with a symbolic 1% rate, and the transition from the old state and municipal taxes to the IBS will take place gradually between 2029 and 2032.

The Ibovespa suffered its largest percentage drop since December 2025, closing Tuesday's session down 3.28% at 183,104.87 points. The move was triggered by a wave of risk aversion that swept global markets in response to the escalation of the Middle East conflict, now in its fourth day without any signs of de-escalation. At its intraday low, Brazil's main stock index touched 180,518.33 points before a partial recovery toward the end of the session. At its high, the Ibovespa had reached 189,602.38 points during the early trading hours. Financial volume was significant, totaling BRL 46.8 billion — well above the year's daily average of BRL 34.6 billion — highlighting the intensity of position liquidation by institutional and foreign investors. Despite the sharp correction, the Ibovespa still accumulates a 13.64% gain in 2026, having momentarily surpassed the 192,000-point mark at its annual peak recorded in February. The decline is therefore viewed by analysts more as profit-taking amplified by the external environment than as a trend reversal. The commercial dollar followed the flight-to-safety movement, closing up 1.91% at BRL 5.2639. Even with the day's appreciation, the US currency still accumulates a 4.10% decline for the year, reflecting the interest rate differential favoring the real and positive foreign investment flows into the Brazilian market during the first months of 2026. Otávio Araújo, analyst at Zero Markets Brasil, explained that "what we are seeing is a classic flight to assets considered safer," referring to the capital migration from emerging markets to US Treasury bonds and gold. Brent crude, the international benchmark, closed up 4.7%, accumulating gains of more than 11% over two days, influenced by Iranian threats to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20% of global oil trade passes. On the domestic front, the impact of external stress compounds uncertainties about the government's fiscal policy management. Recent Focus Bulletin data showed that inflation projections for 2026 jumped to 4.1%, pressured by the rising dollar and higher petroleum-derived fuel prices. The year-end Selic rate expectation was revised from 12% to 12.25%, incorporating the possibility that the Central Bank may adopt a more cautious pace of rate cuts given the adverse external environment. Market operators warn that volatility is expected to remain elevated in the coming days until there is clarity on the Middle East conflict's developments and their impacts on global energy supply chains.

Brazilian fintech PicPay is preparing to go public on the US Nasdaq exchange, seeking a $2.46 billion valuation and planning to raise approximately $434 million in the offering. The company intends to offer around 22.9 million shares priced between $16 and $19 each, in what will represent the first major IPO by a Brazilian technology company in approximately four years, since Nubank's historic listing in 2021. Founded in 2012, PicPay evolved from a peer-to-peer payments platform into a comprehensive digital banking service. The platform currently offers credit cards, insurance products, and buy-now-pay-later functionality, serving 42 million active users as of September 2024 — positioning it as one of Brazil's largest digital finance platforms, second only to Nubank in customer count. PicPay is controlled by J&F Investimentos, the holding company of billionaires Wesley and Joesley Batista, who built protein industry giant JBS into a global corporation. Bicycle Capital, a Latin America-focused growth equity firm, anchors the offering with a planned $75 million investment. Citigroup, Bank of America Securities, and RBC Capital Markets lead the deal as joint global coordinators, with shares expected to trade under the ticker "PICS" on Nasdaq. The operation signals the return of international investor interest in Latin America's fintech ecosystem, after a period of pullback following the 2021 IPO boom. Simultaneously with PicPay, Brazilian digital bank Agibank has also filed for a New York listing, indicating that the American market has once again become attractive for Brazilian financial companies. Brazil's fintech ecosystem currently comprises over 900 startups operating across nearly 40 different segments. Digital banks such as Inter, with over 30 million customers, C6 Bank, which has JPMorgan as a shareholder with 46% ownership, and Neon, focused on lower-income segments, complete the landscape of a sector that moves billions of reais annually and has Pix — with BRL 35.36 trillion in transactions in 2025 — as its primary payments infrastructure. Financial market analysts assess that PicPay's IPO will serve as a barometer for American investor appetite for Brazilian technology assets. If successful, the operation could pave the way for other fintechs and tech startups from the country to access the US capital markets in the coming months.

The Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) of Brazil's Central Bank decided to reduce the benchmark Selic interest rate from 15% to 14.75% per year at its second meeting of 2026, marking the first cut after a prolonged period of holding rates at their highest levels since 2006. The decision, announced on Wednesday, signals the start of a monetary easing cycle eagerly awaited by financial markets and the productive sector. The 0.25 percentage point reduction was justified by the committee based on moderating domestic economic activity and a resilient labor market. The Copom's statement acknowledged that, while both headline and core inflation remain above the established target, recent softening in indicators opens space for a gradual start to monetary loosening. Inflation measured by the IPCA decelerated to 3.81% in annual terms in February 2026, but expectations from analysts surveyed in the Focus poll remain elevated, pointing to 4.1% by year-end 2026 and 3.8% for 2027 — both above the 3.25% target center set by the National Monetary Council. The tightening cycle that brought the Selic to 15% began in September 2024, when the rate stood at 10.5%. The monetary squeeze was implemented aggressively over nine months, aimed at combating inflationary pressures from the dollar's appreciation, rising food prices, and unanchored market expectations. The rate remained unchanged at 15% from June 2025 until this meeting. Sérgio Goldenstein, a former Copom member and current financial market analyst, characterized the reduction as potentially the beginning of a broader cutting cycle for 2026, though he cautioned that rising global geopolitical tensions — including the Middle East conflict and trade disputes between major powers — create unpredictability that could limit the speed and magnitude of future cuts. Financial markets reacted positively to the decision. The Ibovespa rose in the following trading session, while futures interest rate contracts retreated, pricing in expectations that the Selic could end 2026 between 12% and 12.25% per year. Banking sector economists project between three and four additional cuts by year-end, depending on inflation trajectory and the external environment. For businesses and consumers, the start of the cutting cycle represents gradual relief from credit costs, which reached record levels during the 15% interest rate period. The average bank spread for individuals exceeds 30 percentage points, making consumer credit among the most expensive in the world. The expectation is that the Selic reduction will begin to be reflected in final consumer rates starting in the second quarter.

The Brazilian economy recorded growth of 2.3% in 2025, completing five consecutive years of expansion, according to data released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The Gross Domestic Product reached BRL 12.7 trillion in current values, while per capita GDP hit BRL 59,687, representing real growth of 1.9% compared to 2024. The result, while positive, points to a deceleration compared to the 3.4% performance recorded in 2024. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the economy advanced just 0.1% compared to the previous quarter, reflecting the impact of the restrictive monetary policy adopted by the Central Bank, which raised the Selic rate from 10.5% in September 2024 to 15% in June 2025 in order to contain inflation. The five-year growth trajectory highlights the resilience of the national economy: 4.8% in 2021, 3% in 2022, 3.2% in 2023, 3.4% in 2024, and 2.3% in 2025. Despite the contractionary pressure from elevated interest rates, the country closed the year with the lowest unemployment rate ever recorded in historical series. On the production side, all sectors showed growth. Agriculture led with an expansion of 11.7%, accounting for 32.8% of total GDP variation in the period. Record harvests of corn, up 23.6%, and soybeans, up 14.6%, were the main highlights. The services segment grew 1.8%, driven by information and communication performance, which advanced 6.5%. Industry expanded 1.4%, with oil and natural gas extraction standing out at 8.6%. On the demand side, household consumption grew 1.3%, at a more moderate pace than the 5.1% in 2024. The advance was supported by labor market improvements and government transfers but constrained by elevated interest rates that make consumer credit more expensive. Government consumption rose 2.1%, while investments advanced 2.9%, driven by capital goods imports and construction sector expansion. Economists consulted assess that the growth forecast for 2026, currently at 1.82% according to the Central Bank's Focus Bulletin, will depend heavily on the speed at which the Copom conducts the rate-cutting cycle initiated this month. The labor market, which created 112,334 formal jobs in January according to Caged data, remains a key support for economic activity.