According to Reginaldo Nogueira, senior economist at Ibmec, expectations and the global context reinforce the technical need to maintain the Selic
O IPCA-15prior to official inflation, reinforced the decision of the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) do Banco Central (BC) of not reducing the basic interest rate in Brazil, the Selic, which is at a high level of 13.75%. The preview of inflation was 0.69% in March, driven mainly by fuel and food. In the last 12 months, the accumulated inflation is 5.36%. The BC has been receiving criticism from the Lula government for maintaining the Selic rate at that level, but the real economy demonstrates that Copom was right, evaluates Reginaldo Nogueira, senior economist at Ibmec. “We have an important global inflationary environment. All central banks around the world are acting on this. And at the Brazilian central bank it has not been different. So, from a technical point of view, we have justifications for this work, it is something hard, which has generated pressure, but which is understood by the market, by economists, as something that, given the inflation scenario, inflation expectations and the international environment, it couldn’t have been any different”, he says.
In March 2022, the IPCA-15 was 0.95%, representing a slow drop in inflation in the country compared to this month of March 2023. Of the nine groups of products surveyed by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for pointing out the preview of inflation, eight had an increase this month, with emphasis on gasoline: 5.76% higher in the monthly rate. with high expectations for this year, above inflation, above the target for this year and next, and all this in this context where we have the Central Bank in a very strict manner, very consistent with the objective of reaching the target, if not in 2023, the which is proving to be very difficult, at least from 2024 onwards”, comments Nogueira.
*With information from the reporter Marcelo Mattos