BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s finance ministry on Tuesday lifted its 2024 inflation forecast to 3.63%, from 3.52%, and kept its estimate for growth in Latin America’s largest economy unchanged at 2.3%.
The country’s central bank has maintained its key interest rate at a six-year high of 13.75% at recent meetings to prevent a possible resurgence of high inflation, which hit an annual rate of 4.18% in April. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government, however, is pressing for rate cuts.
The new inflation estimate for next year is below the 4.13% average estimate of private economists, according to the latest Focus survey from the central bank, which has a 3% target for 2024 with a tolerance margin of 1.5 percentage points.
(Reporting by Isabel Versiani; Editing by Leslie Adler and Paul Simao)