Rousseff Vows to Boost Economy: Daily

By Ben Tavener, Senior Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Dilma Rousseff has pledged further stimulus packages for the Brazil, including fresh investments in infrastructure products for airports, ports, rail and roads, Reuters news agency reports. The president promised Brazil’s economy would grow faster in the latter half of 2012, thanks to a number of incentives including tax breaks and interest rates cuts.

The president said that bigger growth would come in spite of unfavorable conditions in the wider global economy.

Also in what has been seen by commentators as a pressure on the car manufacturing industry’s plans to shed jobs, she said that anyone getting help from the government should be underpinning the jobs market:

“All sectors receiving government incentives must know that we do so for one reason: to provide employment and income for the economy.”

Despite the news about fresh boosts to the economy, some economists have posted their gloomiest outlook for 2012 yet – at just 1.5 percent growth, lower than the disappointing 2.7 percent seen in 2011, and much less than the 7.5 percent achieved the year before.

President Rousseff made her comments in London before attending the opening of the Olympic Games, and must have been only too aware that many of Brazil’s promised infrastructure projects – meant to be completed by Brazil’s hosting of the World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympics in Rio – have been struggling as the country’s economy slows.

Read more (in Portuguese).

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