LatinNews Regional Monitor: Brazil & Southern Cone - 25 March 2020

* Brazil’s Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) university and think-tank has released its latest consumer confidence index (ICC), which shows that consumer confidence in March 2020 reached its lowest point since January 2017. The ICC fell 7.6 points compared with February, and 10.4 points compared with March 2019, to a total of 80.2 points. The ICC has accumulated a loss of 11.4 points in the first three months of the year. Although the majority of the data for the ICC was collected before the most restrictive measures to contain the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic were introduced in Brazil, the coordinator of the FGV’s surveys, Viviane Seda Bittencourt, notes that the effect on consumers of the coronavirus, which became a global concern in January, could already be felt. “Although it is difficult to imagine a recovery of confidence on the visible horizon, we hope that the success of the isolation measures to reduce the spread of the virus may at least contain part of the discouragement that will come with the drop in GDP and the increase in unemployment”, Seda Bittencourt said.

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