Is Brazil’s economy really better than that of other countries, as Bolsonaro said in JN?

In an interview with Jornal Nacional, on TV Globo, this Monday (22/8), President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) said that the numbers of the Brazilian economy “are fantastic taking into account the rest of the world”.

“If you take today’s data, you see Brazil as perhaps the only country in the world with deflation, a country where inflation will be lower than, for example, England, lower than the United States,” said the candidate. to reelection.

In the monthly variation from June to July, Brazil registered a deflation of 0.68% in the IPCA (Broad Consumer Price Index), according to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).

The fall came, however, after successive increases in inflation levels. In the last 12 months, for example, inflation in the country is 10.07%, even with the fall recorded in July.

In this segment, Brazil has the 4th highest inflation rate among the G20 countries, a group that includes the largest economies in the world, according to data from the beginning of August from the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).

In the group, the country is second only to Turkey, which has accumulated inflation of 79.6% in the last 12 months, and to Argentina and Russia, with rates of 71% and 16.7%, respectively.

When considering the general inflation of the G20 in the last 12 months, of 9.25%, the Brazilian rate is also higher.

The cumulative inflations of the countries cited by the president, the United States and the United Kingdom, are estimated at 8.52% and 8.8%, according to OECD data for July.

In the comparison between the months of June and July, the annual inflation of the USA also decelerated, from 9.1% in June to 8.52% in July.

In terms of future forecasts, the OECD estimates Brazil’s final inflation for 2022 at 9.72%. This forecast also places Brazil in 4th position among the G20 countries with the highest inflation, behind only Turkey, Argentina and Russia.

The OECD forecast for this year for US inflation is 7.04% and for the UK, 8.8%.

Economic growth

In the interview with Jornal Nacional, the president said that some of his campaign promises “were frustrated by the pandemic, by a huge drought that we had last year and also by Ukraine’s conflict with Russia”.

In terms of economic growth, Brazilian GDP (Gross Domestic Product) grew by 1% in the first quarter of 2022, compared to the last three months of 2021, according to the IBGE.

In comparison with the same period of the previous year, the economy grew by 1.7%. In current values, the GDP reached R$ 2.249 trillion.

The IBGE has not yet released the results for the second quarter, but according to the GDP Monitor, released by the Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV Ibre), the result was 1.1% growth compared to the previous quarter.

The 1st quarter result released by the IBGE places Brazil in 8th place within a GDP performance ranking with 32 countries prepared by the Austing Rating risk rating agency.

In the list, the Brazilian economy is behind Peru (2%), Philippines (1.9%), Canada (1.6%), Taiwan (1.6%), China (1.3%), Turkey (1 .2%) and Thailand (1.2%) and tied with Mexico and Colombia.

In the same ranking, the country appears ahead of nations such as the United Kingdom (0.8%), Australia (0.8%), Germany (0.2%) and Japan (-0.3%).

The United States appears at the bottom of the list of 32 countries, with a negative change of 1.4% in the first quarter of 2022.

In terms of future forecasts, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) forecasts growth of 1.7% for Brazilian GDP in the whole of 2022, according to July data.

This cut puts Brazil in 16th position among the G20 countries, in terms of growth projection.

Unemployment

Bolsonaro also mentioned in the interview with TV Globo the unemployment data compiled during his government.

“We took 2020 and 2021 and we had a positive balance of almost 3 million jobs in Brazil, unlike 2015 and 2015, when we had a loss of almost 3 million jobs in Brazil,” said the president.

“What is this a sign of? Competence of the economic team. Programs such as Pronampe and BEM preserved more than 10 million jobs in Brazil.”

According to data from the Caged (General Registry of Employed and Unemployed), released by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, 2,771,628 job vacancies were created in the formal market in 2021.

In 2020, however, there was no positive balance: 192,746 jobs were closed. In total, therefore, 2,578,882 million jobs were created in the period mentioned by the president.

Between 2014 and 2015, however, 887,626 jobs were lost, not 3 million, according to Rais (Statistical Yearbook of the Annual Report of Social Information).

This text was originally published here.