Brazil’s central bank said on Friday it aimed to prevent foreign exchange “distortions” but set no target values for its national currency, the real, which is soaring against the US dollar.
“The central bank doesn’t have forex targets ... what we have is a policy of [foreign currency] reserve accumulation to improve the country’s resistance to the crisis,” the head of the institution, Henrique Meirelles, told reporters in Sao Paulo.
The real has gained 26 percent against the dollar so far this year, recovering almost all the ground lost when the global financial crisis hit last September.
Although the dollar initially strengthened during the crisis because of its safe-haven status, it has since weakened considerably as investors looked to higher-risk emerging markets such as Brazil that promise better returns.
On Friday, the real was trading at 1.85 to the dollar.
Brazil’s central bank has been taking advantage of the dollar’s relative weakness over the past three months to bolster its already hefty foreign reserves.
Its purchases of the US unit have seen those reserves swell to a record US$212 billion last month, making Brazil’s exports more expensive in dollar terms.
That has become a point of concern for several exporting companies, which raised that problem in a meeting on Wednesday with Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega, the state news agency Agencia Estado reported.
Although many sectors in Brazil are showing renewed growth powering the country out of a short-lived recession, manufacturing companies are continuing to have difficulty, said Armando Monteiro Neto, head of the National Confederation of Industry.
Brazil could lose market share as a result and see its economy — already heavily reliant on exports such as orange juice, soya, iron and coffee — become dependent on commodities, he said.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Taiwanese prosecutors suspect that three people successfully smuggled at least one shipment of Nvidia Corp artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China after first exporting them to Japan, people familiar with the matter said. The trio was detained last week by the Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office for allegedly falsifying documents related to exports of Super Micro Computer Inc servers containing advanced Nvidia chips, which the US has barred from sale to China without a license from Washington. The move marked Taiwan’s first public crackdown on AI chip diversion after years of pressure from the US to take a more active role in curtailing
RSS