Strong Brazilian economy is Bolsonaro’s campaign trump card

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, highlighted the drop in the price of gasoline announced today when he also reported the strong growth of the country’s economy, two good news that can benefit the image of the ruler who will seek re-election in the October elections.

“New reduction in the price of gasoline starting tomorrow, the average price of Petrobras gasoline for distributors will go from 3.53 reais to 3.28 reais per liter,” posted the president and candidate for re-election for the Liberal Party (PL, right).

“Brazil has an economy that is giving an example to the world, inflation down, GDP up, this is the Brazil that works well, and we have been in government for three and a half years without corruption,” Bolsonaro asserted during a rally in Curitiba, capital of the state of Paraná.

Brazil’s strong economy is one of the main arguments of the head of state in his campaign in search of a second term.

Economy minister Paulo Guedes said he had a brief conversation with Central Bank President Roberto Campos Neto, who, according to Guedes, is already talking about a GDP growth of 3% this year.

North American Bank of America raised its forecast for Brazilian GDP growth this year to 3.25% from 2.5%.

“Brazil may have lower inflation and higher growth than the G7,” Guedes said.

The G7 is composed of the world’s largest economies.

Guedes said that market economists are wrong in their forecasts because they are looking at the old economic growth model.

Bolsonaro obtained 32% of voting intentions, with a rise of 3 points, in the last Datafolha poll, which placed in first place with 47% the former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers’ Party (PT, left).

Political media and campaign committees were awaiting the release of a new Datafolha poll scheduled for the early hours of Thursday night.

Both Datafolha and pollsters Quaest and FSB have described a persistent growth of Bolsonaro in the last polls, a movement attributed to the strengthening of social programs and, to a lesser extent, to the improvement of macroeconomic data such as the improvement of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reported this Thursday that the GDP had a growth of 1.2% in the second quarter of this year, thus registering an expansion of 2.5% in the aggregate of the last six months.

In the second quarter of this year, the activity of the leading Latin American economic power showed an improvement of 3.2 % compared to the same period of 2021.

The most dynamic sector was industry, with an improvement of 2.2% in the second quarter, while services, representing about 70% of GDP, showed an increase of 1.3%.

The figures disclosed by the IBGE indicate “the consolidation of the resumption of economic activity despite the impact of the conflict in Eastern Europe and the effects of the pandemic (of coronavirus),” said a press release from the Ministry of Economy.

“In sum, the continuity of the recovery and the sustainability of the Brazilian economic activity is confirmed,” pointed out the note of the ministry, whose head is Paulo Guedes, one of the government’s top men, who could remain in office in case Bolsonaro is reelected.

With this performance, Brazil ranked 7th in a table on world economic growth prepared by the risk rating agency Austing Rating.

The Netherlands occupied the first place in this table on growth in the second quarter, followed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, said Austing Rating, in an article published in the Brazilian news portal G1.