IMF sees growth of Brazil’s GDP of 1.2% in 2023 and 1.5% in 2024

The perspective of growth in Brazil this year is slightly better in the accounts of the International Monetary Fund, which highlighted a “fiscal support” greater than what was expected in the country in its Global Economic Perspective report.

The update of the projections disclosed in this second fair (30) shows that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Brazil should grow 1.2% this second year according to the IMF, from the high of 1.0% estimated in December and well below the expansion of 3.1% projected for 2022.

On the other hand, the estimate for 2024 fell by 0.4 percentage point, with now expectations of expansion of 1.5% of the economy.

The IMF scenario for this year is better than that expected by analysts consulted in the Focus study of the Central Bank, which sees expansion of just 0.8% of GDP according to the most recent study. But for 2024 the accounts coincide.

The Central Bank has projected in December an expansion of 1.0% of GDP in 2023, after an estimated growth of 2.9% in 2022.

The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva must disclose its first estimates for activities in March.

Latin America

According to the IMF report, the growth of Latin America and the Caribbean should slow down from 3.9% in 2022 to 1.8% in 2023, with a revision to the top of 0.1 percentage point in the account for this year in relation to the report of outubro.

This revision reflects the improvement in the Brazilian account, as an increase of 0.5 percentage point in the estimated expansion of Mexico for this year, to 1.7%.

According to the IMF, this is due “to an unexpected resilience in domestic demand, higher-than-expected growth in our main trading partners and, not Brazil, higher-than-expected fiscal support,” according to the report.

Last year, the government adopted fiscal incentive measures, such as a reduction in the ICMS rate on fuel, energy and telecommunications, in addition to cutting federal taxes, or that helped consumption.

In January, the Lula government renewed at February the removal of federal taxes on gasoline and at the end of this year the tax on diesel and gas.

At the same time, at the end of 2022, the PEC of Transition was approved, which, among other measures, guaranteed the extension at the end of this year of the payment of 600 reais per month to low-income families in the Bolsa Família program.

The region’s growth should accelerate to 2.1% in 2024, but there has been a downward revision of 0.3 percentage point in this estimate, reflecting more avowed financial conditions, lower prices of exported commodities and downward revisions in the growth of partners You trade, according to the Fund.

For the group of emerging markets and developing economies, of which Brazil is a part, the IMF raised the growth estimate this year by 0.3 point and fell to the next year by 0.1 point, to 4.0% and 4 .2% respectively, after an expansion in 2022 projected at 3.9%.