By Sarah de Sainte Croix, Senior Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In the face of an ever-worsening global financial crisis, it seems Brazil’s economic juggernaut will not be stopped. In the first ministerial meeting of the year today, Brazil’s Finance Minister, Guido Mantega, predicted that the country’s economy will continue to grow in 2012, even surpassing its growth for 2011.
According to a spokesperson for Mantega, Brazil fulfills all the criteria necessary to enjoy sustainable growth over the coming year including: above average rates of growth (four percent); a strong jobs market; increasingly even distribution of wealth; and strong regional and international growth, amongst other factors.
The President of the Brazilian Central Bank, Alexandre Tombini, was more cautiously positive, predicting that GDP growth would improve over the coming months and that inflation would continue to fall, before reaching its target level of 4.5 percent later on in the year.
According to the spokesman, Tombini said the situation in Europe is expected to stabilize, although some countries will be in recession, the growth of the United States should present a slight improvement in 2012 and the expansion of the Chinese economy, despite high growth, will have slight slowdown compared to 2011.
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