BRAZIL | `Potential to grow by 3%'. Central bank president Henrique Meirelles told a bicameral congressional committee last week that, with inflation under control and fiscal stability guaranteed, the country now has the `capacity to grow by 3% or more in 2003' and by higher rates thereafter. He did, of course, acknowledge that as a result of this year's problems, the economy will only grow by 0.6%. Without providing any figures, he told legislators that `signs of reactivation can already be perceived in several sectors' — sooner, he claimed, than the experts had expected — and they will soon become clearer and spread to all sectors of the economy.
Vice-President José Alencar, addressing a different committee, said that as long as interest rates were not reduced more aggressively, `there may be growth, but not the growth that Brazil needs.'
CHILE | Industry perks up, job scene flat. Industrial output in Chile in September was up 5.8% year-on-year; sales were up 3.8%. This took the 12-month averages to 3.5% and 3.1%, respectively. The breakdown of the September figures shows production of capital goods up a remarkable 71.3% — a sign of companies gearing up for expansion — while that of intermediate goods was up only 3.1% (which suggests that expansion will not be immediate).
INE's national unemployment rate for July-September was 9.4%, unchanged from the previous running quarter and only 0.3% lower than a year earlier. It calculates the rate for Santiago at 9.2%, or 0.8 points more than a year earlier.
The economics school of the Universidad de Chile calculates the rate for Santiago at 13.4%, which is slightly down on both the previous running quarter (-0.2 points) and a year earlier (-0.3 points). Dean Joseph Ramos says, `The slight improvement reflects a still modest recovery of the Chilean economy and as we move on to the last quarter and 2004, a further fall in unemployment can be expected. So far, though, expectations are above results.'
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