In April, Kuwait floated a new tender for building turbines for a plant in the north of the country. At that time, the Ministry had expected costs for bringing the plant into effect by 2011 to be far less than 700 million dinars. Kuwait has one of the world’s highest per capita power consumption rates.

Apart from GE, other companies that initially qualified for the project included Germany's Siemens (SI), Japan's Mitsui & Co. (MITSY) and Marubeni Corp., Spain's Iberdrola Ingenieria Y Construccion and Canada's SNC-Lavalin Ltd.

General Electric has products and services ranging from aircraft engines, power generation, water processing and security technology to medical imaging, business and consumer financing, media content and industrial products. It serves customers in more than 100 countries and employs more than 300,000 people worldwide.

We currently have a Neutral recommendation on GE.

Chicago, IL - July 1, 2009 - Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Pozen (POZN), Kimberly-Clark Corporation (KMB), Enterprise Products Partners (EPD), Teppco Partners (TPP) and Chevron Corporation (CVX).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Tuesday's Analyst Blog:

Pozen Files For Approval of Vimovo

Today, Pozen (POZN) announced the submission of the new drug application (NDA) to the U.S. FDA, seeking marketing approval for Vimovo (proposed trade name for PN-400) for the treatment of signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis in patients who are at risk for developing NSAID-associated ulcers.

Vimovo is a combination of 500mg enteric coated naproxen and 20mg immediate release esomeprazole. In early December 2008, Pozen released positive top-line data from its 400-301/-302 phase III program testing PN-400 (20mg esomeprazole / 500mg naproxen) vs. 500mg enteric coated naproxen alone. Results show that 400 patients total in both trials taking PN-400 experienced statistically significant fewer number of confirmed gastric ulcers by endoscopy compared to 400 subjects receiving enteric coated naproxen during the six-month period.

Kimberly-Clark to Reduce Workforce by 3%

Kimberly-Clark Corporation (KMB) announced plans to reduce its salaried workforce by approximately 1,600 positions (or 3%) by the end of 2009, which management believes will yield annualized savings of $150 million.

The organizational changes will require charges of $140 million to $150 million (or between $0.24 and $0.26 per share), mostly in the second quarter of 2009 (about $0.19 per share). Management expects to achieve $0.10 per share in savings during the second half of 2009.

Enterprise to buy Teppco

Enterprise Products Partners (EPD) and Enterprise GP Holdings L.P. announced a definitive agreement to merge with Teppco Partners (TPP) along with Teppco's general partner. The merger of the master limited partnerships (MLPs) will take place on a unit-for-unit basis to form the largest publicly traded energy partnership with an enterprise value of more than $26 billion.

The combined partnership will operate under the Enterprise name and trade under the 'EPD' ticker symbol. Post merger, Teppco and its general partner - Texas Eastern Products Pipeline Co. LLC - will become wholly owned subsidiaries of Enterprise. The completion of the merger is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to take place in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Chevron Begins Steamflood

The Saudi Arabian subsidiary of Chevron Corporation (CVX) started steam injection in its large-scale pilot steamflood project at Wafra field. This Eocene heavy-oil carbonate reservoir lies in the Partitioned Neutral Zone (PNZ) between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The $340 million pilot is the final test phase for steamflooding the reservoir. Upon completion, the project would be the world's first commercial conventional steamflood in a carbonate reservoir.

Steamflood technology is an enhanced oil recovery method that involves injecting steam into heavy-oil reservoirs to heat the crude oil underground, reducing its viscosity and allowing its extraction through wells. Chevron has been using this method over the years to produce heavy oil from reservoirs at Kern River, California, and Duri Field, Indonesia. Duri is the biggest producing field that Chevron operates in the country.

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Continuous coverage is provided for a universe of 1,150 publicly traded stocks. Our analysts are organized by industry which gives them keen insights to developments that affect company profits and stock performance. Recommendations and target prices are six-month time horizons.

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New reports put BlackRock's deal for BGI at $13 billion.

During the weekend, several new articles appeared in British papers reporting that BlackRock Inc. is closing in on a deal to acquire Barclays Global Investors, the parent company of iShares, in a transaction worth up to US$13 billion.

But not all the reports were as definitive as the one coming out of the US late last week. Pensions & Investments magazine, on its Web site, broke the news late Friday afternoon after markets had closed in the US. It quoted unnamed sources as saying that the groundwork for a deal was in place and that an announcement would be forthcoming.

The story also had estimates that a BlackRock purchase of BGI would surpass $10 billion. (See related story here.)

However, in a story over the weekend, a report out of London by the Financial Times said that Barclays isn't expected to reach a decision until early this week on who will purchase its asset management division.

Also, more details are leaking out about the complexity of such a transaction.

Barclays is expected to acquire a stake of 20% in BlackRock. Meanwhile, BlackRock is likely to rely on financing from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. And Barclays’ president, Bob Diamond, is supposedly rumoured to be considering joining the board of the US-based BGI.

Larry Fink, BlackRock’s founder and chief executive, met the Kuwait and Qatar Investment Authorities last week to seek funding, according to the Financial Times.

The deal, if confirmed, would set a record for the acquisition of an asset management company, dwarfing the US$ 8.5 billion paid by BlackRock for Merrill Lynch’s fund arm in 2006.

It would also trigger a payout of US$ 585 million for the 200 employees of BGI with stakes in the company, with Diamond set to receive around US$ 30 million.

Although weekend press reports suggested that a new deal is close to being reached, Barclays has another 10 days until the June 18 deadline for seeking further bids for iShares and other related businesses.

This was set as part of the US$ 4.2 billion May agreement to sell iShares to CVC Capital Partners. CVC will receive a US$ 175 million break fee if Barclays concludes a transaction with a third party, as now seems likely.

A BlackRock acquisition of BGI would mean intensifying competition in the fixed-income ETF market, according to some observers. Last week Pimco, BlackRock’s biggest riva,l initiated its ETF range with a 1- to 3 -ear US Treasury bond tracker, undercutting the equivalent iShares fund with a 9 basis point annual fee.

-- IndexUniverse.eu's Paul Amery submitted this report. IU.com's Murray Coleman also contributed.

In May, one of the broadest commodities indexes—the S&P GSCI—produced its biggest one-month gain since Iraq invaded Kuwait in September 1990.

The S&P GSCI increased 19.67% in the month. That compared to a gain of 22.94% in September 1990, according to Standard & Poor's, which released the results on Tuesday. (See table below.)

"Solid commodity gains in May were attributed to most commodities accelerating the recovery process from the sharp declines experienced during the second half of 2008 and first quarter of 2009," said Michael McGlone, S&P's director of commodity indexing in a statement.

Year-to-date through May, the S&P GSCI had registered a total return of 5.95%, led by strength in the energy and agriculture sectors.

Sparked by price increases in unleaded gas and crude oil, the S&P GSCI Energy Index increased 25.44% on the month for a year-to-date gain through May of 4.38%. The S&P GSCI Agriculture Index was the second-best-sector performer last month, increasing 12.37% for a year-to-date gain of 8.18% heading into June.

Metals also performed well in May. The S&P GSCI Precious Metals Index gained 11.41%, putting it up 12.71% for the year. The S&P GSCI Industrial Metals Index increased a more modest 5.82% on the month. But it has been the strongest year-to-date sector performer with a gain of 22.23% (led by a 55.72% increase in copper) through May.

--- This article was submitted by IndexUniverse's Murray Coleman.

When I first began working on my Ph.D. dissertation in 1980, I was intrigued by the fact that the oil embargo of 1973-74 and the collapse in Iranian oil production after the revolution in 1978 were both followed by global recessions. But when I called attention to the fact there had been a sharp increase in the price of oil prior to 6 of the 7 postwar U.S. recessions up to that point, the general response was one of skepticism.

By the time I was presenting evidence of this relation at various seminars in 1981-82, the Iran-Iraq War had produced yet another shock to world oil markets and the NBER declared that the U.S. experienced a new recession immediately on the heels of the previous downturn, meaning that the evidence had now become that 7 out of 8 recessions had followed oil price increases. That research was subsequently published in the Journal of Political Economy in 1983 and the Energy Journal in 1985. My ideas about how this relationship might be explained by disruptive changes in the composition of spending appeared in the Journal of Political Economy in 1988.

We received some more evidence on this relationship when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, causing oil prices once again to double and coinciding with the 9th postwar recession. The price of oil also shot up before the 2001 recession. Add in the conjunction of the oil shock of 2007-08 with our current economic pickle, and my count is now up to 10 out of 11.

For the record, my position has never been that oil prices were the sole cause of all of these recessions. But the evidence persuaded me that oil must have been a contributing factor in at least some postwar recessions.

Given my long interest in this area, the Brookings Institution approached me about the possibility of writing a paper on the causes and consequences of the oil shock of 2007-08. In that paper I compared what happened last year with what we'd seen in the many previous episodes. I presented those findings at a Brookings conference earlier this month, and described some of the results for Econbrowser readers here and here.

One of the things I did in that paper was to examine a number of different models of the effects of oil prices on the economy that had been developed for earlier data, and look at what those models would have predicted to happen in 2007-08. My conclusion was that most of those models held up pretty well. Using any of the estimates surveyed, the oil shock of 2007-08 was big enough to have made a material negative contribution to real GDP over the period 2007:Q4 to 2008:Q3, and the details of what happened over that period are quite consistent with the predictions.

The reason that I think this is an interesting finding is that this period-- 2007:Q4 to 2008:Q3-- was when the U.S. entered recession #11. The fourth quarter of 2008 saw a very dramatic deterioration in all the economic indicators, but if you focus just on the first 12 months of the recession-- 2007:Q4 to 2008:Q3-- things wouldn't have had to be much better before most analysts would have said that the economy was not even in a recession prior to 2008:Q4. For example, real GDP actually grew by 0.7% between 2007:Q3 and 2008:Q3.

Dave Cohen argues that the GDP figures are too optimistic, and I agree. But whatever your preferred measure might be, it wouldn't take much to nudge 2007:Q4-2008:Q3 into a range that's not usually associated with recessions. For example, gross domestic income on average fell by -0.45% over 2007:Q4-2008:Q3. My paper calculated that using any of the models surveyed this would have been a positive number if there had not been the contractionary effects of the oil shock. Alternatively, a 12-month drop in total employment is sometimes used as another indicator of whether the economy is in a recession. We crossed that threshold in the summer of 2008. But if we had not shed 150,000 jobs in auto manufacturing-- job losses that I think were pretty clearly tied directly to the oil price shock-- employment growth would still have been positive going into the fall of 2008.

Comparison of the effects on auto industry employment of the oil shocks of 1990 and 2007-08. Graph shows cumulative change in the number of workers employed in motor vehicles and parts manufacturing in months subsequent to July 1990 (red) and July 2007 (blue).

Why does it matter whether, in the absence of the oil shock, the experience over 2007:Q4-2008:Q3 might have been a bit better in terms of such measures as GDP or employment? My answer is that the drops in overall spending that were caused by higher oil prices proved to be the knockout punch for an economy that was already wobbly. Whatever your preferred culprit might be for our current difficulties-- loan default rates, falling house prices, debt burdens, or pessimistic sentiment-- that measure would have had a more favorable value going into the fall of 2008 if we had experienced more favorable fundamentals in terms of income and jobs over 2007:Q4-2008:Q3. And there's no question that more favorable fundamentals are exactly what we would have had if the price of oil had never gone over $100 a barrel.

The fact that the biggest drop in output didn't occur until well after the oil price went up, and resulted not from the oil price itself but instead from the interaction with other factors and the dynamic forces unleashed when the overall level of economic activity began to decline, is also exactly the same pattern we saw in each of the previous recessions.

Was the oil shock of 2007-08 the sole cause of the recession? Certainly not. But did it make a material contribution? In my opinion, the answer unquestionably is yes.

You can also find a lot more discussion over at theoildrum.com ([1], [2], [3]).

Technorati Tags: oil, oil prices, oil shocks

• Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), the world’s largest maker of personal computers, offered a preview of its fiscal fourth-quarter profits – reporting that it will beat market expectations and raise its fiscal 2009 outlook. “HP is gaining market share in an extremely strong competitive position. They’ve got share gains, combined with very aggressive cost reduction,” Shannon Cross of Cross Research told Reuters.

• Lars Olofsson, Executive Vice President of Nestle SA, has been named Chief Executive Officer of Carrefour S.A., the world’s second-largest retailer. He’ll join the company in at the Carrefour’s…

Don’t expect oil prices to remain at these low levels for long, says Byron King. Demand weakness for crude is temporary. And oil-producing nations cannot sustain their own economies unless oil prices are close to $100 a barrel. Byron says it could be time for investors to slowly build up a position in oil service stocks.

This from Whiskey & Gunpowder:

Along with the market decline, the price of oil has fallen. It’s down 50% within three months. Back when oil hit $147 per barrel in July, I said that the price “ought” to be in the range of $100-110, with the possibility of a drop into the $90s. That’s what the fundamentals told me back then.

Most of the decline in oil…

Now with oil down more than 50% from near $150 a barrel in July, the Persian Gulf is beginning to suffer from its own credit squeeze.

The bottom line is that world credit markets could suffer, further crippling the economy and the banking industry.

Persian Gulf SWFs control huge amounts of money. The combined funds of the United…

• Bahrain
• Croatia
• Egypt
• Estonia
• Georgia
• Hungary
• India
• Israel
• Kazakhstan
• Kuwait
• Lebanon
• Netherlands
• Nigeria
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Poland
• Romania
• Russia
• South Korea
• Taiwan
• Turkey
• UAE
• Ukraine
• Eastern Europe
• Easter Europe ex-Russia
• MENA
• Middle East
• Africa
• Emerging Markets

– Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has announced it will pour $2.3 billion in loans to low-income borrowers.

– There are also signs of trouble in boom town Dubai. The WSJ reports that real-estate brokers there say they are seeing signs of “price weakness” there. We can only presume this is real-estate broker speak for “Nobody’s buying.”

– Over the weekend, “Dr. Doom,” aka New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini, told The…

As expected, the companyÂ’s first half 2008 net profit declined by more than 50% from the year-ago period. The company expects profits to fall further in the second half of the year. Thus, we rate the stock a Hold with a six-month target price of $33.

On August 27, Shanghai Petrochemical reported first-half 2008 results. In the first six months of 2008, the company recorded a net loss of $47.72 million, compared to a profit of $230 million in the prior-year period. The company reported diluted loss per ADS of $0.01 in the first half of 2008.

Substantial increase in international crude oil prices has affected earnings. For the same period, the company reported an operating loss of $264 million. For the six-month period ended June 30, SHIÂ’s turnover was $4.2 billion, up 22.55% year over year.
 
By 2010, SHI is expected to have 16 million tons of crude oil processing capacity and 1.60 million tons of production capacity of ethylene, 0.95 million tons of synthetic resin and plastics and 1.40 million tons of chemical fiber raw material and synthetic fiber, enabling a strong foothold in international markets.

As a part of its growth strategy, the company entered into a joint venture with Kuwait's national oil company, Kuwait Petroleum Company, to build an oil refinery with oil processing capacity of 300,000 barrels per day. The project is estimated at $5.5 billion.

Read the full analyst report on SHI

One notable recent development has been the decision by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to award Brazil investment grade, with the foreign currency debt rating being raised to BBB- from BB+. This decision has produced considerable debate as many long term Brazil watchers believe that the upgrade comes at a time when Brazil has all the cyclical winds blowing in her favour, and ask the not unreasonable question what happens when the weather shifts? It is clear however that Brazil has made tremendous improvements over the past decade in terms of central bank independence, reigning in inflation and setting public debt on a sound footing, so whatever the fine print details, Standard and Poor’s decision can surely not be considered an imprudent one.

As regards its external balance Brazil is rather different from many other large emerging economies since while the central bank (which has a high level of independence from government) does intervene in the spot market to try to keep a lid on the Real’s rise and to built up a “war chest” of international reserves the bank has allowed the currency to rise substantially against the US dollar (as of July the Real had appreciated by some 13% against the dollar in 2008) and Brazil has also recently opened a small but quite manageable deficit on its current account, which means that Brazil as it develops is becoming a net consumer of excess capacity in the global economy. A break-down of the current account position reveals that Brazil continues to retain a surplus on the goods balance due to the importance of commodities and food but that services and in particular a negative income account are now gradually pulling the overall balance into negative territory. This is really what one could reasonably expect in the context of an emerging economy at Brazil's stage of development.



On the monetary policy front the central bank is rapidly earning a reputation for itself as Latin America’s new Bundesbank, and governor Henrique Meirelles delivered a decisively hawkish message during the last monetary council meeting to accompany the decision to hoist rates by 75 basis points to the current 13% level. Brazil's interest rate is now the the second-highest inflation-adjusted one in the world after Turkey's. Brazil's real interest rate, or the benchmark 13 percent rate minus annual inflation of 6.06 percent, is 6.94 percent. Turkey currently has the world's highest so-called real interest rate at 7.55 percent.

This decision is the continuation of a hiking campaign set in motion in order to establish strong credentials for the central bank as an inflation fighter, and to prevent generalised inflation expectations from taking a hold among the population. The central bank is attempting to keep inflation within the the official target of 4.5% and with inflation forecast to be somewhat above that figure in 2009 the central bank is simply acting accordingly.



Such aggressive tightening is, however, not without its problems, and policy makers now face a serious dilemma. Predictably, given the state of the current global environment, the central bank's larger than expected interest hike was rapidly translated into an appreciation of the Real – pushing it to its strongest level since 1999. So far, the 13% rise against the USD this year puts the real in the pole position amongst emerging market currencies versus the USD. This position is reasonably comprehensible taking into account the recent decision to award Brazil investment grade status; this coupled with a nominal yield on 10 year government notes at about 15% and a benchmark stock index – the Bovespa – which is up approximately 10% from its January level, implying a 20% gain in US dollar term, basically mean that international investors are finding it hard not to put money into Brazil at this point in time.

Consequently, with a global credit crisis far from over, a hawkish central bank, and a hard currency making exports more difficult one could only reasonably expect the economy to slow in line with weaking global momentum. The key point with respect to the Real would be that a continuing rise will push the external balance further into negative territory. Moreover, in a likely scenario where global commodity prices somewhat pare-back their recent impressive upward movement Brazil’s external bookkeeping will further come under pressure.

Outlook on Key indicators

• 
  Following the most recent rate hike market expectations have now solidified towards further interest rate increases in the pipeline. The driving orce here will, as ever, be inflation running above the central bank's nominal target. Here at Emerginvest we see the Central Bank of Brazil aiming for a nominal rate of 15% which should be reached over the course of the next three meetings.
• 
  The Real is likely to continue to be supported by a hawkish central bank but as the external balance moves steadily into negative territory macro-fundamentals may take over, and as the economy slows and inflation comes into the target zone the central bank will once more move into loosening mode pushing the Real down in the process. A violent correction however is not expected.
• 
  GDP growth is expected to moderate in 2008 compared to the levels seen in 2007 but at this point growth projections remain solid, and we certainly see Brazil’s mid term sustainable growth rate as being above the consensus 3%-5% rate once inflation is firmly under control.

2007 Data

GDP (2007) - 5.4%
Inflation (2007) - 3.6%
Current Account Deficit -0.27% of GDP
Fiscal Deficit - 2.27% GDP
Debt to GDP ratio - 42.8%


Debt Ratings (local currency, long term)

Fitch - BBB-
S&P - BBB+
Moody- Ba1


2008 Central Bank Inflation Target - 4.5% (+ or – 2pp)

Population Median Age -29 years
Total Fertility Rate (2007) -1.88 child per women
Male Life Expectancy - 68.57 years

Development Indicators Rank (131 economies in total)

Global Competitiveness (World Economic Forum)
72/131 (2007-08)
Business Competitiveness (World Economic Forum)
59/131 (2007-08)


Selected Sub-components

Institutions - 104/131
Infrastructure - 78/131
Macroeconomic Stability - 126/131
Health and Primary Education -84/131

Short Term Data

Retail Sales Growth (May, y-o-y, volume index) - 10.5%
Industrial Output (May, y-o-y) - 2.4%
Inflation (July 2008) - 6.3%
Central Bank Interest Rate (SELIC Rate) - 13.0%

One notable recent development has been the decision by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to award Brazil investment grade, with the foreign currency debt rating being raised to BBB- from BB+. This decision has produced considerable debate as many long term Brazil watchers believe that the upgrade comes at a time when Brazil has all the cyclical winds blowing in her favour, and ask the not unreasonable question what happens when the weather shifts? It is clear however that Brazil has made tremendous improvements over the past decade in terms of central bank independence, reigning in inflation and setting public debt on a sound footing, so whatever the fine print details, Standard and Poor’s decision can surely not be considered an imprudent one.

As regards its external balance Brazil is rather different from many other large emerging economies since while the central bank (which has a high level of independence from government) does intervene in the spot market to try to keep a lid on the Real’s rise and to built up a “war chest” of international reserves the bank has allowed the currency to rise substantially against the US dollar (as of July the Real had appreciated by some 13% against the dollar in 2008) and Brazil has also recently opened a small but quite manageable deficit on its current account, which means that Brazil as it develops is becoming a net consumer of excess capacity in the global economy. A break-down of the current account position reveals that Brazil continues to retain a surplus on the goods balance due to the importance of commodities and food but that services and in particular a negative income account are now gradually pulling the overall balance into negative territory. This is really what one could reasonably expect in the context of an emerging economy at Brazil's stage of development.



On the monetary policy front the central bank is rapidly earning a reputation for itself as Latin America’s new Bundesbank, and governor Henrique Meirelles delivered a decisively hawkish message during the last monetary council meeting to accompany the decision to hoist rates by 75 basis points to the current 13% level. Brazil's interest rate is now the the second-highest inflation-adjusted one in the world after Turkey's. Brazil's real interest rate, or the benchmark 13 percent rate minus annual inflation of 6.06 percent, is 6.94 percent. Turkey currently has the world's highest so-called real interest rate at 7.55 percent.

This decision is the continuation of a hiking campaign set in motion in order to establish strong credentials for the central bank as an inflation fighter, and to prevent generalised inflation expectations from taking a hold among the population. The central bank is attempting to keep inflation within the the official target of 4.5% and with inflation forecast to be somewhat above that figure in 2009 the central bank is simply acting accordingly.



Such aggressive tightening is, however, not without its problems, and policy makers now face a serious dilemma. Predictably, given the state of the current global environment, the central bank's larger than expected interest hike was rapidly translated into an appreciation of the Real – pushing it to its strongest level since 1999. So far, the 13% rise against the USD this year puts the real in the pole position amongst emerging market currencies versus the USD. This position is reasonably comprehensible taking into account the recent decision to award Brazil investment grade status; this coupled with a nominal yield on 10 year government notes at about 15% and a benchmark stock index – the Bovespa – which is up approximately 10% from its January level, implying a 20% gain in US dollar term, basically mean that international investors are finding it hard not to put money into Brazil at this point in time.

Consequently, with a global credit crisis far from over, a hawkish central bank, and a hard currency making exports more difficult one could only reasonably expect the economy to slow in line with weaking global momentum. The key point with respect to the Real would be that a continuing rise will push the external balance further into negative territory. Moreover, in a likely scenario where global commodity prices somewhat pare-back their recent impressive upward movement Brazil’s external bookkeeping will further come under pressure.

Outlook on Key indicators

• 
  Following the most recent rate hike market expectations have now solidified towards further interest rate increases in the pipeline. The driving orce here will, as ever, be inflation running above the central bank's nominal target. Here at Emerginvest we see the Central Bank of Brazil aiming for a nominal rate of 15% which should be reached over the course of the next three meetings.
• 
  The Real is likely to continue to be supported by a hawkish central bank but as the external balance moves steadily into negative territory macro-fundamentals may take over, and as the economy slows and inflation comes into the target zone the central bank will once more move into loosening mode pushing the Real down in the process. A violent correction however is not expected.
• 
  GDP growth is expected to moderate in 2008 compared to the levels seen in 2007 but at this point growth projections remain solid, and we certainly see Brazil’s mid term sustainable growth rate as being above the consensus 3%-5% rate once inflation is firmly under control.

2007 Data

GDP (2007) - 5.4%
Inflation (2007) - 3.6%
Current Account Deficit -0.27% of GDP
Fiscal Deficit - 2.27% GDP
Debt to GDP ratio - 42.8%


Debt Ratings (local currency, long term)

Fitch - BBB-
S&P - BBB+
Moody- Ba1


2008 Central Bank Inflation Target - 4.5% (+ or – 2pp)

Population Median Age -29 years
Total Fertility Rate (2007) -1.88 child per women
Male Life Expectancy - 68.57 years

Development Indicators Rank (131 economies in total)

Global Competitiveness (World Economic Forum)
72/131 (2007-08)
Business Competitiveness (World Economic Forum)
59/131 (2007-08)


Selected Sub-components

Institutions - 104/131
Infrastructure - 78/131
Macroeconomic Stability - 126/131
Health and Primary Education -84/131

Short Term Data

Retail Sales Growth (May, y-o-y, volume index) - 10.5%
Industrial Output (May, y-o-y) - 2.4%
Inflation (July 2008) - 6.3%
Central Bank Interest Rate (SELIC Rate) - 13.0%