Brazil Economy Grows Below Forecast at 0.6 Percent

Brazil says the country’s gross domestic product grew 0.6 percent in the first quarter of the year. The result was below the 0.9 percent market analysts had forecast.

IBGE, the government’s statistics bureau, says on its website that the economy grew 0.6 percent compared to the fourth quarter in 2012 and 1.09 percent compared to last year’s first quarter.

The country’s agricultural sector registered the best performance of the quarter, growing 9.7 percent. Industrial output contracted 0.3 percent.

In all of 2012, the gross domestic product grew just 0.9 percent. It was the worst annual result since 2009 when the GDP contracted 0.3 percent.

The government has projected a 4 percent GDP growth by year’s end, but analysts don’t believe it will grow more than 2.9 percent.

via Mainichi

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza