Weekly Report - 29 August 2013 (WR-13-34)

REGION | Adjusting to stronger dollar. On 22 August Brazil’s central bank (BCB) announced that it was launching a US dollar swap programme to inject at least US$60bn in local currency markets in a bid to strengthen the weakening local currency, the Real. The surprise announcement came after the US Federal Reserve (Fed) confirmed that it plans to phase out its ‘Quantitative Easing’ (QE) policies by next year. The BCB’s move will only heighten concerns about the state of Latin America’s largest economy.