By Hélio Costa Jr.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) completed 100 days in his third term on Monday (10), leading to the worst performance of the Ibovespa since the beginning of the first mandate of Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1995.
Until the close of Friday (7), Ibovespa accumulated a fall of 8.12% in 2023.
The negative result is second only to the 28.28% drop recorded in the first 100 days of the Cardoso administration.
During the last 100 days, Lula has fed narratives of opposition between the government’s interests and those of the financial market, criticizing the Central Bank, the source of recent economic instability.
In his first speech as president, he classified the spending cap, the country’s fiscal anchor, as “stupidity.”
“Is this country working out? So, I want to know what independence was for.”
“I will wait for this citizen Campos Neto to finish his mandate so we can evaluate what the independent Central Bank meant,” said Lula.
Days later, he said again: “Brazil needs to grow again. There is no reason for the interest rate to be at 13.75%.”
He also criticized privatizations and identified investors as guilty of plundering Brazil’s common resources.
The PT members have also found it difficult to deal with inflation.
The inflation target for 2023 is 3.25%, with a tolerance of 1.5 points, more or less.
So far, the accumulated IPCA over 12 months is 5.60%, forcing the Central Bank to keep interest rates high.
With information from Brasil Sem Medo