Maua Investimentos sees decline in Brazilian export volume and domestic investment....

Mauà’s managers gave their insights on the Brazilian economy in their September monthly letter, received by Opalesque.

“The external turbulence has been affecting Brazil via both the channel of exports, and via the channels of lending and expectations. In trade balance, the slowdown in global growth has already been causing a decline in the volume of Brazilian exports – a movement that should intensify over the next few months. Credit is slowing down in response to the decline in global liquidity, which affects external currency credit lines, and increased risk aversion, which leads national banks to step on the brakes when it comes to granting domestic credit.

Faced with this scenario, we believe Brazilian GDP, which should grow 5% in 2008, will slow down to around 3%. The main reason for the decline in growth should be domestic investment, which should decline from the current 16% p.a. to around 4.5%.

Weaker GDP growth in Brazil and the decline in commodities prices in international markets should facilitate the Central Bank’s work in bringing consumer inflation back to the 4.5% target – and this is precisely our forecast for year-end 2009 IPCA inflation, versus the 4.8% we were forecasting up until September. Due to this, we believe the Central Bank should reduce the size of the interest rate hike cycle initiated in April.

The risk in relation to inflation lies primordially in the BRL depreciation in recent months, which already exceeds 35% in nominal terms. However, we believe this movement is exaggerated versus the fundamentals of the domestic econ......................

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Maua Investimentos sees decline in Brazilian export volume and domestic investment....