Brazil & peer roles
Moving beyond the themes of
productivity, structural reforms and demography
that will unite emerging markets in 2018, there
are individual countries that deserve special
attention.
The first is Brazil, a country for which
we hold high hopes but one that has the
potential to lose its current momentum of
reform. A consumption-led recovery means the
recession finally ended in 2017 and,
encouragingly, service-based sectors
accelerated.
Consumption is growing as
consumers respond to lower interest rates and a
stabilisation in the labour market. Monetary
easing should help encourage this. Despite this,
reform remains beholden to political processes.
One of the metrics we are looking to as an
indicator is investment which has continued to
perform poorly but should accelerate by 2.6 per
cent in 2018, if reforms remain on track.
EU Forecast
euf:b18:80/nws-01