Brazil has already injected an estimated US$ 164 billion, mostly into banks and corporations, since the beginning of the financial downturn, according to the Brazilian official news agency, Agência Brasil.
The financial effort has concentrated on four areas: reduction in banks technical deposits; interventions in the money exchange market to contain the US dollar; cut or elimination of taxes and credit lines for corporations and consumers.
Agência Brasil estimates that 60% of those authorized government resources went straight to the financial system.
Since the first financial problems the Brazilian government targeted restabilizing credit to productive activities as the main priority, and then authorized the reduction of banks technical deposits, that is funds banks must hold at the Central Bank or to back up loans.
This mechanism enabled the liberation of an estimated US$ 44 billion, which helped pump liquidity to the system.
However markets did not recover their full dynamics according to the all powerful Confederation of National Industries and the São Paulo Federation of Industries.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva admitted there have been delays in the reactivation of financing but he attributed to the time that elapses before the practical implementation of measures.
Agência Brasil also reveals that since the beginning of the financial turbulences the Bank of Brazil sold US$ 53 billion in the money exchange market in an attempt to keep the US dollar from appreciating too much. The local currency real has lost 32% of its value against the dollar.
Over half those funds were future contracts, or swaps which have the backing of government but do not affect reserves.
Besides swaps the Brazilian central bank sold US$ 9.8 billion of its international reserves, which now stand in the range of US$ 200 billion.
Mercopress
