Latinnews Daily - 28 January 2005

BRAZIL: According to the official statistics agency, the Ibge, the 2005 harvest will be 13.29% bigger than last year's, growing from 119 m t in 2004 to 134.9 m t this year. 

BRAZIL: According to figures from the trade-union-linked Seade-Dieese, unemployment in the metropolitan region of São Paulo in December 2004 fell to 17.1% from the 17.4% registered in the previous month.

BRAZIL: According to the central bank, the interest rate charged by special cheques increased 2% between November and December last year, to 144% annually. In the same period, the interest rate charged by banks for personal loans increased by 4.4%, to 66.9% annually. 

BRAZIL: According to the NGO NoVox, there are 6.2m homeless in Brazil.