Brazil's share of foreign direct investment (FDI) stood at US$ 886 million last December, having totaled US$ 34.616 billion in 2007. FDI reached US$ 2.487 billion in December 2006, and US$ 18.782 billion in the whole of 2006. The data were disclosed this Monday, January 28, by the Brazilian Central Bank.
The annual FDI was below the estimate presented three weeks ago by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), which was US$ 37.4 billion, but still it was almost twice as much as the total for 2006. The figure was also slightly lower than the projection of the Central Bank, which was US$ 35 billion.
The current account surplus, which includes the balance of trade, services, income and unilateral transfers, posted a US$ 699 million deficit in December, but ended the year at a surplus of US$ 3.555 billion. In the previous year, the country had run a current account surplus of US$ 13.621 billion.
The balance of trade ran a surplus of US$ 3.636 billion in December, and ended the year at US$ 40.040 billion; the income and services account ran a deficit of US$ 4.795 billion and accumulated US$ 40.570 billion during the year; unilateral current transfers ran a US$ 460 million surplus in December and a US$ 4.086 billion surplus in the year.
Foreign reserves stood at US$ 180.334 billion in 2007, as against US$ 85.839 billion in 2006.
Lower Trade Surplus
Foreign sales of Brazilian products totaled US$ 3.284 billion last week, at a daily average value of US$ 656.8 million, whereas national purchases of foreign products stood at US$ 2.932 billion, at a daily average of US$ 586.4 million.
The balance of trade ran a surplus of US$ 352 million between the 21st and 25th this month, according to a bulletin disclosed this by the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade.
In the accumulated result for the month, the balance of trade is running a US$ 748 million surplus, as a result of US$ 10.858 billion in sales and US$ 10.110 billion in purchases. Exports have decreased by an average of 15.2% compared with the previous month, whereas imports have grown by 6%.
Thus, the average daily surplus for the 18 business days in January, until last Friday (25th), is just US$ 41.6 million, which is 63.7% less than the average for January last year, and 77.1% lower than the average recorded last month.
ABr
