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Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

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Mostrando postagens com marcador IMF. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador IMF. Mostrar todas as postagens

sábado, 30 de abril de 2022

Latin America Faces Unusually High Risks - Santiago Acosta-Ormaechea, Ilan Goldfajn and Jorge Roldos (IMF)

 IMF 

Latin America Faces Unusually High Risks

April 26, 2022

By Santiago Acosta-OrmaecheaIlan Goldfajn and Jorge Roldos


The War in Ukraine, higher inflation, tighter financial conditions, economic decelerations of key trading partners, and social discontent may dim growth prospects.

The war in Ukraine is shaking the global economy and raising uncertainty about the outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The impact is being felt in Latin America through higher inflation that is affecting real incomes, especially of the most vulnerable. Policymakers are reacting to this challenge by tightening monetary policy and implementing measures to soften the blow on the most vulnerable and contain the risks of social unrest.

But there are other risks looming. A possible escalation of the war could eventually lead to global financial distress and tighter financial conditions for the region.

In addition, the ongoing tightening of monetary policy in the United States, as the Federal Reserve takes a more hawkish stance, could eventually affect global financial conditions.

Higher global and domestic financing costs can accelerate capital outflows and represent a challenge for the region, given large public and external financing needs in some countries and the limited resources to finance investment in the region.

Any greater growth deceleration in China, because of the pandemic or other reasons, could also have an impact on key export prices and trade in the region. All these risks cloud growth prospects for Latin America and require policy action.

Latin America’s rebound poised to slow

Even before the war, the region’s recovery from the growth-sapping pandemic was losing momentum. After a sharp rebound last year, growth is returning to its pre-pandemic trend rate as policies shift, slowing to 2.5 percent for 2022. Exports and investment are resuming their role as main growth drivers, but central banks have had to tighten monetary policy to combat an increase in inflation.

We forecast Brazil’s expansion will slow to 0.8 percent this year following last year’s growth of 4.6 percent. Mexico will decelerate to 2 percent. Colombia will likely post a lower deceleration with growth at 5.8 percent. Growth in Chile and Peru will be 1.5 percent and 3 percent, respectively, pointing to very significant reductions relative to their prior year’s double-digit rates.

Responding to higher food and energy prices 

Poverty and inequality remain key concerns as well given that the increase in inflation has an uneven impact on the population. The most vulnerable groups in the region are being hit hard by the increase in basic food and energy prices, while still struggling to recover from the economic impact of the pandemic.

Indeed, since the war began, several countries in the region have acted to contain the effects of rising prices on vulnerable groups—ranging from tax and import tariff reductions to price caps or social transfers.

Close to 40 percent of countries have introduced new measures, mostly on the tax side, with an estimated average fiscal cost equal to 0.3 percent of gross domestic product for this year.

To ensure social cohesion and reduce the risk of social unrest, governments should provide targeted and temporary support to low-income and vulnerable households, while allowing domestic prices to adjust to international prices. This would help vulnerable groups and contain fiscal costs, while also incentivizing production and restraining consumption. In countries with well-developed social safety nets, access could be expanded to temporarily cover larger groups of the population.

Where safety nets are not well developed, governments can implement temporary mechanisms to smooth the pass-through of international price surges to domestic prices. Although this strategy would protect households from the volatility of commodity prices, it may also have a significant fiscal cost while distorting price incentives for consumers and producers.

Countries benefiting from improvements in their terms of trade—a measure of prices for a country’s exports relative to its imports—may find it easier to finance these new measures. However, any additional fiscal space should be used wisely given the unusually high risks surrounding the global recovery and the evolution of commodity prices, as well as the increasing costs for government financing.

Inclusive consolidation is needed

With public debt-to-GDP ratios above pre-pandemic levels and borrowing costs rising amid higher local and global interest rates, countries will need to ensure the sustainability of public finances to help preserve credibility and rebuild fiscal space. However, it will be equally important to implement measures that protect the most vulnerable.

This will require a strategy that focuses on inclusive consolidation. Spending on social programs, health, education, and public investment should be protected, while implementing tax reforms (such as strengthening personal income taxes) that will bolster growth in an inclusive manner and help countries maintain fiscal sustainability.

segunda-feira, 19 de abril de 2021

Spillovers in a “Post-Pandemic, Low-For-Long” World - Joint BIS, BoE, ECB and IMF Conference, April, 26-27, 2021

 Para os que amam política monetária (devem ser poucos), ou gostam de relações econômicas internacionais (devem ser mais numerosos) e todos aqueles que se interessam pelo futuro econômico deste nosso planetinha redondo (no qual o Brasil aparece desgarrado)...


Spillovers in a “Post-Pandemic, Low-For-Long” World
Joint BIS, BoE, ECB and IMF Conference
April 26-27, 2021

In recent decades, countries have deepened their economic and financial interdependencies. Over the same period, global interest rates have fallen to historic lows, despite a slight pick-up this year. In this environment, countries have increasingly adopted policy mixes featuring unconventional monetary policy, foreign exchange interventions, macroprudential measures and capital flow management to cope better with the spillovers of a highly interconnected global economy. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced an additional layer of complexity, with consequences for the global economy, public finances, monetary policy and financial fragilities. This conference aims to close gaps in our understanding of the international transmission of local vulnerabilities and shocks in a post-pandemic, high-debt, low interest rate environment.
Monday. April 26, 2021 (ET)
To register for the conference, please email: 

Opening Session: 8:00 am
Welcoming Remarks – Fabio Panetta, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB
Monetary Autonomy in a Globalised World

SESSION 1: Chair: Livio Stracca, ECB, 8:30 am
What Goes Around Comes Around: How Large Are Spillbacks from US Monetary Policy Really?
Max Breitenlechner (University of Innsbruck), Georgios Georgiadis (ECB), Ben Schumann (Free University of Berlin)
Discussant: Silvia Miranda-Agrippino (Bank of England)

9:15 am:
Supply Spillovers During the Pandemic: Evidence from High-Frequency Shipping Data
Diego Cerdeiro (IMF), Andras Komaromi (IMF)
Discussant: Nitya Pandalai-Nayar (University of Texas at Austin)

10:00 am: Interest Rates and Foreign Spillovers
Roberto de Santis (ECB) and Srecko Zimic (ECB)
Discussant: Chiara Scotti (Federal Reserve Board)

10:40 am: Break

SESSION 2: Capital Flows and Macroprudential Policy
Chair: Angela Maddaloni, ECB, 11:00 am
Surges and Instability: The Maturity Shortening Channel
Xiang Li (Halle Institute for Economic Research), Dan Su (University of Minnesota)
Discussant: Mahvash Qureshi (IMF)

11:45 am: Spillovers at the Extremes: Macroprudential Tools and Vulnerability to the Global Financial Cycle
Kristin Forbes (MIT Sloan), Anusha Chari (University of North Carolina), Karlye Dilts-Stedman (Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City)
Discussant: Damiano Sandri (IMF)

12:25 pm:
Session Ends

April 27, 2021 (ET)
SESSION 3: Covid Effects and Monetary Policy Responses
Chair: Katrin Assenmacher, ECB, 8:30 am
An Event Study of COVID-19 Central Bank Quantitative Easing in Advanced and Emerging Economies
Alessandro Rebucci (Johns Hopkins), Jonathan Hartley (Harvard University), Daniel Jimenez (EAFIT University)
Discussant: Kristina Bluwstein (Bank of England)

9:15 am: The Calming of Short-term Market Fears and its Long-term Consequences: The Federal Reserve's Reaction to COVID-19
Lerby Ergun (Bank of Canada), Mattia Bevilacqua (London School of Economics), Lukas Brandl-Cheng (London School of Economics), Jon Danielsson (London School of Economics), Andreas Uthemann (Bank of Canada), Jean-Pierre Zigrand (London School of Economics)
Discussant: Saleem Bahaj (Bank of England)

10:00 am: ECB Euro Liquidity Lines
Silvia Albrizio (Bank of Spain), Ivan Kataryniuk (Bank of Spain), Luis Molina (Bank of Spain)
Discussant: Inaki Aldasoro (BIS)

10:40 am: Session Ends

SESSION 4: Exchange Rates and Currency Exposures
Chair: Luca Dedola, ECB, 11:10 am
The Original Sin Redux: A Model-based Evaluation
Nikhil Patel (BIS), Boris Hofmann (BIS), Steve Pak Yeung Wu (University of British Columbia)
Discussant: Ozge Akinci (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

11:45 am: The Exchange Rate Insulation Puzzle
Giancarlo Corsetti (Cambridge University), Keith Kuester (University of Bonn), Gernot Mueller (University of Tubingen), Sebastian Schmidt (ECB)
Discussant: Anna Lipinska (Federal Reserve Board)

12:25 pm: Session Ends

quinta-feira, 21 de janeiro de 2021

O FMI agora se preocupa com a concentração de renda nos EUA e acha que as políticas públicas devem colaborar para reduzi-la

 

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FD Header
Heather


Dear Colleague,

Tomorrow here in Washington is the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. Among the many crises on his plate, inequality is perhaps the most pervasive. Heather Boushey, an incoming member of President-elect Biden's White House Council on Economic Advisors, carved out a blueprint to address this very issue in our latest edition of F&D.

She writes that workers and their families on the wrong side of the many US economic disparities are there for several reasons—including a stubborn reliance by policymakers on markets to do the work of government, and the racism and sexism, sometimes written into law, that blind policymakers to injustice and to economic sense.

Interested in learning more? Jump to the 1800-word piece or download the PDF. I've also included the full article below.

###

The COVID-19 pandemic is shining an unforgiving spotlight on the many inequalities in the United States, demonstrating how pervasive they are and that they put the nation at risk for other systemic shocks. To stop the spread of the virus and emerge from a crushing recession, these fundamental inequalities must be addressed. Otherwise not only is a slow economic recovery more than likely, but the odds grow that the next shock—health or otherwise—will again throw millions out of work and subject their families to fear, hunger, and lasting economic scars.

Before the pandemic, the United States was in the midst of a decade-long recovery from the Great Recession, which began in December 2007. But not all Americans experienced that recovery in the same way. The top 1 percent emerged as strong as ever in terms of wealth, regaining what they had lost by 2012. As of March 2020, however, US working- and middle-class families had barely recovered their lost wealth, and many families, especially those of color, never recovered. Even amid a strong recovery, the United States was burdened by extraordinary economic and racial inequality.

Today, stark differences among US workers and their families make the current recovery neither U- nor V-shaped but rather one that resembles a sideways Y, with those benefiting from a stock market recovery or employed standing on the branch of the Y that points up unaffected by the recession, and those on the bottom branch facing perhaps years of struggle. And there are stark differences of race and class between the upper and lower legs of that sideways Y. This recession provides an opportunity for policymakers to address these inequalities with transformative policy changes to produce a healthier and more resilient economy that delivers strong, stable, and broad-based growth and prosperity.

Disparities abound

Workers and their families on the wrong side of the many US economic disparities are there for several reasons—including a stubborn reliance by policymakers on markets to do the work of government and the racism and sexism, sometimes written into law, that blind policymakers to injustice and to economic sense.

This article will identify specific causes of economic inequality in the United States and then explain how to address them.

Markets: Beginning in the 1980s, conservative economists began to make the case that unfettered markets were the only way to deliver sustained growth and well-being. This ideology, with modest exceptions, has governed US economic policymaking ever since. But it has not delivered. Moreover, the supposedly neutral and fair rules that govern markets have in fact shifted economic risk away from corporations and the wealthy toward medium- and low-income families. This has never been more apparent than now, when the coronavirus has caused mostly low-income workers to either lose their jobs or have to work in employment that exposes them to the risk of contracting and spreading the disease.

Tax cuts, weak public investment: President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which benefited largely the better-off, is only the most recent manifestation of a tax-cutting philosophy that has governed US fiscal policy for decades. These measures have starved the nation of resources that could be used to fund basic governmental functions and critical public investments. As a result, public investment as a share of GDP—the value of goods and services produced in the United States in a year—has fallen to its lowest level since 1947.

Eroding worker power: The ability of US workers to bargain for higher wages and benefits and better and safer working conditions has been sapped by years of anti-union court and administrative rulings. And in 27 states, right-to-work laws make it harder for unions to form. As employers gained the upper hand, wages stagnated, and worker safety has suffered, especially during the pandemic.

Economic concentration: US antitrust policy and enforcement have allowed industries across the United States to become increasingly concentrated, giving large businesses market power to set prices, eliminate competitors, suppress wages, and hobble innovation. What’s more, there is evidence that this is dampening firms’ investment. Some are thriving in the midst of—indeed because of—the pandemic, while small businesses struggle to survive.

Measuring the economy: Before the 1980s, when US economic inequality began its upward trajectory, growth in GDP was a reasonably reliable indicator of the well-being of most Americans. But as economic inequality has risen close to its 1920 levels, the benefits of GDP growth have gone disproportionately to the top 10 percent of earners, while income growth for the vast majority of people has been slower than that of GDP—in some cases, none at all. For that reason, GDP reflects mostly how the better-off are doing. As GDP recovers in the coming months, therefore, it will give policymakers false signals about whether average Americans are recovering.

Racism and sexism: The disparate health and economic consequences of the coronavirus recession reinforce the reality and history of racism and sexism in the United States. The median earnings for a Black household are 59 percent of those of a White household, and for men and women of all races, a median woman earns 81 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The results of job segregation are apparent, with health care and service workers on the pandemic front lines. Despite being essential, some of these jobs—in which women and minorities are overrepresented—are the least likely to have benefits such as paid sick time or employer-provided health insurance.

These problems are largely the result of decades of failed policies supported more by ideology than evidence. A distorted economic narrative that lionizes markets has led to the weakening of public institutions and the acceptability of less funding for democratic institutions of governance, greater economic concentration, reduced worker power, and the discriminatory effect of laissez-faire labor rules. The role of policy choices in arranging the market structure is unmistakable and enduring.

Building a strong, equitable economy

Transforming the US economy requires policymakers to recognize that markets cannot perform the work of government.

The first step is to eradicate COVID-19. It has to be the first priority, not only for public health but also for the US economy. Beyond that, encouraging a strong and sustained recovery that delivers broadly shared growth also requires the United States to address its long-term problems: a costly health system that leaves millions with insufficient care, an education system designed not to end inequality but to preserve it, lack of basic economic stability for most families, and climate change.

Major public investments are required to deal with each issue. While it is not necessary to worry now about paying for them, the nation should put in place significant tax increases, primarily or entirely on the wealthy, to begin investing in these long-term solutions. The country should tax the enormous wealth concentrated at the top that is being saved, or kept overseas, and not being invested in the economy or in solving societal problems.

Policymakers also must address the economic concentration that has created monopsony power (a single or handful of buyers or employers) that keeps wages down and threatens small businesses, which are the lifeblood of innovation and economic dynamism. The first step is to ensure that the recession and the programs designed to help businesses survive the crisis don’t exacerbate this trend. Thus far, federal policies to address the economic downturn have provided far greater aid to large businesses than to small ones.

Policymakers also must ensure that federal government funds are directed to productive uses that support workers and customers, and not to rewarding wealthy shareholders. Corporations receiving aid should be barred from issuing dividends and carrying out stock buybacks, and banks should be required to suspend capital distributions during the crisis to support lending to the real economy.

Even more fundamental to addressing excessive concentration is strengthening US antitrust enforcement, which is weaker than it has been in decades. The antitrust laws themselves also need to be bolstered, particularly with respect to the rules governing mergers and exclusionary conduct. Legislators should consider creating a digital regulatory authority to enforce privacy laws and enhance competition in digital markets.

The country also needs to better understand who benefits, or does not, from recovery policies and what further actions are needed. Because overall GDP is not up to that task, income must be disaggregated at all levels to measure progress or lack thereof for all groups—which would enable the United States to lay the groundwork for understanding what other actions are needed to ensure more people benefit from the recovery.

US economic inequality is firmly tied to the issue of racial inequality. The unmistakable message of the Black Lives Matter movement is that Americans of color never have been able to trust government to act on their behalf. Government must work to ensure that low-income Black, Latinx, and Native American people can both develop and deploy their talents and skills in the economy.

Taxing wealth, which is disproportionately owned by White Americans, is one solution. But for that to address racial inequities adequately, the proceeds of the wealth tax must benefit the majority of the nonwealthy. The proceeds must be directed to the most urgently needed investments, such as in COVID-19 testing and treatment in communities of color, in policies that expressly and progressively support low-wage workers and care workers, and in engagement with minority-owned small businesses. Otherwise, pervasive inequities will be further entrenched.

A significant reason for the gender earnings gap is the lack of a national paid family and medical leave policy and the absence of a national program to ensure that families have access to quality, affordable childcare and prekindergarten education. Families with children that do not have access to paid leave and childcare—or cannot afford them—have little choice but to put careers on hold. This happens to women far more often than to men. Legislation has been introduced in Congress to accomplish both of these goals, and these measures should get serious consideration in the next Congress.

Reason for optimism

There is reason to believe that the United States can enact policies to transform its economy and society. Until recently, some of the conversations taking place among policymakers and around dinner tables—inspired by COVID-19, the deep recession, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the recent presidential election—would have been relegated to the edges of public debate. Today that is not the case.

Yet the US political system is beset by deep partisanship and a constitutional and electoral system that makes it far easier to block transformative policies than enact them. But I am an optimist, and I still believe that the country could be at an inflection point, with the advantage going to those who develop and advocate progressive policies to reduce inequality and build an economy that produces strong, stable, and broad-based growth.

###

As always, if you have any comments or feedback about this article, or if you have ideas about future contributors and topics to explore, please do write me a note directly. I would love to hear from you.

Take good care and see you next week,

Rahim Kanani


Rahim Kanani
Digital Editor, F&D
rkanani@IMF.org

_____

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terça-feira, 14 de junho de 2016

Efeitos dos acordos de livre comercio: Swarnali Ahmed Hannan (FMI)

The Impact of Trade Agreements : New Approach, New Insights



Author/Editor:
Swarnali Ahmed Hannan

 
Publication Date: June 10, 2016
 
Electronic Access: Free Full text (PDF file size is 849KB).

Summary: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has reinvigorated research on the ex-ante impact of trade agreements. The results from these ex-ante models are subject to considerable uncertainties, and needs to be complimented by ex-post studies. The paper fills this gap in recent literature by employing synthetic control methods (SCM) – currently extremely popular in micro and macro studies – to understand the impact of trade agreements in the period 1983–1995 for 104 country pairs. The key advantage of using SCM to address selection bias – one of the persisting issues in trade literature – is that it allows the effect of unobserved confounder to vary with time, as opposed to traditional econometric methods that can deal with time-invariant unobserved country characteristics. Using SCM approach, the paper finds that trade agreements can generate substantial gains, on average an increase of exports by 80 percentage points over ten years. The export gains are higher when emerging markets have trade agreements with advanced markets. The paper shows that all the countries in NAFTA have substantially gained due to NAFTA. Finally, there is some evidence that trade agreements can potentially lead to slight import diversion, but not export diversion.

Text: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16117.pdf

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate 

sábado, 5 de abril de 2014

Por que a Asia resistiu melhor 'as crises do que a America Latina? - paper do FMI

A Ásia resistiu melhor às crises porque não perpetrou as mesmas bobagens que a América Latina nas décadas anteriores e no período recente. Senão vejamos:
1) crescimento moderado do crédito não é o que tivemos no Brasil no passado recente, ao contrário: ele dobrou nos últimos oito anos;
2) crédito baseado na poupança interna? Nem pensar...;
3) Financiamento externo reduzido? Ninguém consegue...
4) Transações correntes sólidas? Mas elas estão se degradando rapidamente...
Pois é, tudo o que temos de bom, que é um sistema bancário sólido (et encore) foi feito pelo governo anterior; a flutuação cambial também, que nos ajuda a aliviar os desequilíbrios externos e que os companheiros tanto criticaram quando foi feito.
Os companheiros, na verdade, são responsáveis por tudo o que está acontecendo de ruim na economia brasileira, e já nem falo da destruição da Petrobras e da Eletrobras, das patifarias em todas as áreas e da incompetência generalizada. Eles estão simplesmente afundando o Brasil.
Podiam pelo menos aprender como fazer as coisas direito.
Este paper do FMI sobre a Ásia ensina como...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Why Was Asia Resilient? Lessons from the Past and for the Future
Prepared by Phakawa Jeasakul, Cheng Hoon Lim, Erik Lundback
February, 2014
IMF Working Paper, WP/14/38
Monetary and Capital Markets Department 

Abstract:
Asia proved to be remarkably resilient in the face of the global financial crisis, but why was its output performance stronger than that of other regions? The paper shows that better initial conditions—in the form of lower external and financial vulnerabilities—contributed  significantly to Asia’s resilience. Key pre-crisis factors included moderate credit expansion, reliance on deposit funding, enhanced bank asset quality, reduced external financing, and improved current accounts. These improvements reflected the lessons from the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, which helped reshape both public policies and private sector behavior. For example, several countries stepped up their use of macroprudential policies, well before they were recognized as an essential component of the financial stability toolkit.
They also overhauled financial regulations and strengthened oversight of financial institutions, which helped reduce risk-taking by households and firms before the global financial crisis. Looking ahead, Asia is in the process of adjusting to more volatile external conditions and higher risk premiums. By drawing the right lessons from its pre-crisis experiences, Asia’s economies will be better equipped to address new risks associated with increased cross-border capital flows and greater integration with the rest of the world.

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.

sábado, 3 de agosto de 2013

O Brasil parece querer chatear o mundo - Samantha Pearson (Financial Times)

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/07/31/a-brief-history-of-brazilian-bolshiness/#ixzz2awyfC5Zl

A brief history of Brazilian bolshiness


Brazil has been putting its weight about again, this time throwing a spanner into the IMF’s efforts to secure an €11bn bailout for Greece from the eurozone countries. Even if Brazil’s economic weight is not what it used to be, it seems it can still rile the old world when it feels like it.
So for the benefit of beyondbrics readers, here is a timeline of Brazilian bolshiness:
  • October 2009 – Brazil becomes a net creditor of the IMF for the first time after providing $10bn of financing to help developed nations hit by the financial crisis. In a gleeful press conference, finance minister Guido Mantega, says the “radical change” is proof that Brazil is faring much better in the crisis than other countries.
  • May 2010 – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president at the time, takes it upon himself to help Turkey broker a nuclear fuel swap deal with Iran. His cosy relationship with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including lots of public hugging and hand-holding, is seen as an attack on US foreign policy.
  • September 2010 – On a roll now, Brazil’s Mantega declares the world is engaged in a global “currency war”, criticising US monetary stimulus and the subsequent weak dollar for ruining the competitiveness of other countries’ exports. “Everybody wants the US economy to recover, but it does no good at all to just throw dollars from a helicopter,” he declares.
  • April 2012 – Mantega takes the face-off between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ world to a new level. He says the Brics countries are working together to elect a candidate from the developing world as president of the World Bank. However, the Russian government soon declares its support for Jim Yong Kim, the US candidate.
  • March 2013 – Undeterred, Brazil goes one step further announcing that it and the other Brics countries have agreed to create their own development bank to rival the World Bank and the IMF. However, the countries struggle to agree on the bank’s funding or its location.
  • July 2013 – Brazil asks the IMF to change its methodology for calculating nations’ gross debt, complaining it inflates Brazil’s own liabilities. Under the IMF’s methodology, Brazil’s gross debt at the end of last year accounted for 68 per cent of GDP, while the country’s central bank puts the number at 59 per cent.
  • July 2013 – Paulo Nogueira Batista, Brazil’s executive director at the IMF, abstains from approving the fund’s new €1.8bn contribution to Greece’s bailout, in a sign of growing frustration over the bailout of debt-ridden Europeans. Nogueira, who also represents 10 nations from Central and South America and the Caribbean, said he was dissatisfied with almost all areas of Greece’s reform programme.