Commercial sales in Brazil grew for the second straight month, after having racked up negative results in August (-0.13%) and September (-0.18%). The growth rate in November was 0.26%, 0.17 percentage points better than October’s 0.09%.
The upswing in activity was led by the furniture, home appliances, vehicles and motorcycles, and autoparts sectors. According to the coordinator of the Services and Commerce division of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Nilo Macedo, these areas are sensitive to the availability of credit.
The data released, Tuesday, January 17, by the IBGE on commercial sales volume in November also show that the supermarket and hypermarket sector was off 0.37%, after a 0.62% rise in October.
Formal Jobs
At the end of last year, formal jobs (with employees taken on officially, paying all due fees) grew 5.09%, with the creation of 1.254 million work posts.
This was the second best result according to figures disclosed by the General Records Office for Employment and Unemployment (Caged) under the Ministry of Labor, losing only to 2004 (1.523 million jobs generated).
ABr
