Brazil’s Serasa Exerian Corporate Default Index fell to 14.6% in January. At the height of the financial crisis, in Jan 2009, it was 28.9%. Serasa Exerian is Latin America’s largest credit bureau, with the continent’s most extensive data bank on consumers, corporations and economic groups.
Serasa found that in a year-to-year comparison (January 2009 and January 2010), in large corporations there was a significant drop in defaults of over 36%. In the medium size group, the reduction in defaults was 25.7%. But in the small corporate group, where there are still problems obtaining credit, the reduction was only 12.9%.
Bank loan defaults were stable in Jan 2010, while there was a 14.5% drop in rubber checks. But the average value of checks that bounced in January 2010 rose 36% to 1,932.71 reais (US$ 1.087,01) compared to January 2009.
Exchange Deficit
Brazil registered a net outflow (inflow already discounted) of US$ 399 million in February, according to figures disclosed by the Central Bank of Brazil (BC). In the same month last year, there was net inflow of US$ 841 million.
The negative result was influenced by a US$ 2.285 billion outflow of dollars for commercial operations (exports, imports and financing to the sector). In the financial sector (investment in shares, transfer of profits and dividends abroad and foreign direct investment, among other operations) there was a net inflow of US$ 1.886 billion.
In the accumulated result for the year, there was net inflow of US$ 676 million. In the same period last year, there was outflow of US$ 2.177 billion. In the period, exchange operations registered net outflow of US$ 2.425 billion, whereas financial operations resulted in an inflow of US$ 3.101 billion.
The BC also informs that dollar purchases on the spot market expanded international reserves by US$ 350 million in February this year. In January, the total was US$ 1.709 billion.
