Brazil's Financial Market Cuts 2022 Inflation Forecast

According to the Central Bank of Brazil’s weekly focus survey of the country's top financial institutions, analysts raised the inflation forecast for 2023 from 5.17 percent to 5.23 percent.

The country's official inflation target is 3.5 percent for this year and 3.25 percent for next year, with a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points in both cases.

The market expects the benchmark interest rate, currently at 13.75 percent annually, to gradually decline to 11.75 percent in 2023.

Economists slightly downgraded their forecast expansion in GDP for 2022 from 3.05 percent to 3.04 percent, but maintained their projection for 2023 at 0.79 percent.

In terms of the exchange rate, the market expects Brazil's currency, the real, to trade at 5.25 to the US dollar at the end of the year and at 5.27 reals to the US dollar at the end of 2023.

Analysts also estimated a trade surplus of 56.95 billion dollars for 2022 and 58.8 billion dollars for 2023.

Meanwhile, Brazil's foreign direct investment is expected to reach 81.6 billion dollars in 2022 and 80 billion dollars in 2023.

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