Brazil News

Visiting Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff refused to criticize this communist-ruled nation’s human rights record here Tuesday, saying the issue should not be used to score ideological points. “One should sweep one’s own house before criticizing others. We in Brazil also have (human rights problems). Therefore I am willing to discuss human rights from a multilateral perspective,” she told reporters before conferring with President Raul Castro.

Rousseff stressed that human rights should not be “a weapon for ideological political warfare.”

Health regulators said they will stop imports of orange juice from top grower Brazil if they test positive for an illegal fungicide, sending orange juice futures soaring on Tuesday to an all-time high. More >

Economists trimmed forecasts for inflation in Brazil next year to the lowest level in more than three months, a central bank weekly survey showed on Monday, as a deteriorating global economy helps ease price pressures.

Forecasts for Brazil’s benchmark inflation rate in 2012 fell to 5.33 percent from 5.39 percent previously, down for the fourth week in a row, according to the central bank’s Focus survey for the week ending December 23. The central bank expects inflation at 4.7 percent next year.

The cost of electricity from new power projects in Brazil fell to some of the lowest levels ever at an auction Tuesday, as competition among wind and hydroelectric projects pushed prices lower.

Brazilian power-distribution companies contracted 1,211.5 megawatts of new energy capacity to be brought online in 2016, mostly made up of wind-power projects, with some hydroelectric and biomass. The average price for all three types of energy was 102.18 Brazilian reais ($55.50) per megawatt-hour, the second-lowest price at a new energy auction since the current system began in 2004.

Brazil’s economy stalled in the third quarter of this year, demonstrating the vulnerability of the world’s emerging market growth engines to the eurozone crisis and the slowdown in the developed world.

Gross domestic product contracted 0.04 per cent in the three months ending on September 30 compared with the previous quarter as weakness in the industrial sector spread to Brazil’s once vibrant consumer.

A change in the way Brazil gauges inflation will help the central bank near its targets, enabling it to keep cutting interest rates, said Guilherme Figueiredo, hedge fund director at M. Safra & Co.

Figueiredo’s fund trimmed its 2012 inflation forecast to 5.35 percent from 5.65 percent, after the national statistics agency yesterday released new weightings for items in its benchmark IPCA price index, he said.

More than 2,600 barrels of oil may have spilled into the Atlantic ocean because of a leak at an offshore Chevron drilling site, Brazil’s environmental protection agency said Friday.

Officials think 200 to 330 barrels of oil leaked each day from Nov. 8 through Tuesday More >

US energy giant Chevron said Tuesday it had successfully sealed a ruptured offshore well which for the past week has seeped oil into waters off Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state.

The company “can currently advise that well control operations have been successful and that any fluid flow from the well appears to have ceased,” a Chevron statement said.

Brazil posted a trade surplus of $2.355 billion in October, beating forecasts for a third straight month after exports outpaced imports in the final days of the month following a recovery in global commodities prices.

The surplus reported by the trade ministry was more than double the median forecast of $1 billion according to 13 analysts polled by Reuters. It was highest trade surplus for the month of October since 2007.

Brazil’s state-run power utility Eletrobras could pare back ambitious investments in Latin America’s largest economy as the renewal of electric concessions threatens to pinch cash flow. More >