LatinNews Daily - 06 August 2020

In brief: Ninth consecutive cut to Brazil’s interest rate

* The monetary policy committee (Copom) in Brazil’s central bank (BCB) has cut the benchmark interest rate (Selic) by 25 basis points, from 2.25% to 2%. This expected cut brings the Selic to its ninth consecutive record low. The Copom evoked signs of a “partial recovery” of the Brazilian economy, while highlighting the still “challenging” global outlook for emerging economies, amid the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. The Copom has signalled that it will likely now interrupt this cycle of rate cuts, noting that the space for using monetary policy is increasingly small, but did not discard gradually decreasing the Selic again in the future, depending on “the perception of the fiscal trajectory as well as new information that [would] change the Copom’s current assessment on prospective inflation”.