This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 BRASILIA 003682 
 
SIPDIS 
 
NSC FOR SHANNON 
TREASURY FOR OASIA/SEGAL 
PLS PASS FED BOARD OF GOVERNORS FOR WILSON, ROBATAILLE 
USDA FOR U/S PENN, FAS/FAA/TERPSTRA 
USDOC FOR 4322/ITA/IEP/WH/OLAC-SC 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ECON EFIN PGOV ELAB PHUM PREL EINV SOCI BR
SUBJECT:  BRAZIL'S PROSPECTS FOR A RETURN TO ECONOMIC GROWTH 
 
REFS: A) SAO PAULO 1835 
      B) BRASILIA 3405 
 
¶1.  SUMMARY.  Brazil's government, economists and media all now 
voice expectation of forthcoming relative economic relief. 
Hardly anyone dissents from the forecast of 3/3.5% GDP growth 
in 2004.  Optimists suggest a parallel with 2000, when Brazil's 
GDP grew 4.4% after the previous year's 0.7%, despite the 
context of a cloudy world economy, as real interest rates fell 
from 9 to 6 percent.  The hopeful scenario today is for one or 
two quarters of upswing to be driven by consumer-credit 
expansion and long-deferred purchases of durable goods in 
response to the GoB's monetary easing since July, with the 
premise that this new consumption will induce fresh investment 
that would become Brazil's primary economic driver for the 
medium run, in turn spurring extra output, employment and 
consumer buying-power by 2005.  Some unexpectedly good recent 
data for industrial output and capital-goods sales are 
consistent with this picture. 
 
¶2.  Market confidence in the GoB and in domestic political 
events seems quite sturdy.  Calls for the Central Bank to relax 
monetary policy still faster have come from some surprising new 
quarters.  But the GoB is plainly set on breaking Brazil's 
habit of bubble-and-inflationary-bust.  It wants multi-year 
sustainable growth (which coincides with Lula's re-election 
interests), and won't be rushed.  Investors view the status of 
Lula's pension and tax bills, however watered-down, as still 
adequate.  Greater doubt exists as to the GoB's future 
microeconomic/regulatory reforms, upon which by general 
agreement vital investment will hinge.  And Brazil's debt/GDP 
vulnerability remains on everyone's mind.  The main worry is of 
a too-early U.S. monetary tightening.  END SUMMARY. 
 
Consensus on Growth 
------------------- 
¶3.  This cable reflects recent discussions in forty-plus 
meetings with GoB, market, and think-tank specialists in 
Brasilia, Rio and Sao Paulo during Treasury and EXIM visits. 
Interlocutors were drawn from a half-dozen foreign or 
domestic private banks, the Ministries of Planning, Finance 
and Trade, Treasury, multiple offices of the Central Bank, 
the Banco do Brasil, BNDES, Getulio Vargas Foundation, 
National Confederation of Industry, a major manufacturer, a 
top credit-rating agency, congress's tax committee, and 
elsewhere. 
 
¶4.  Without exception, sources agreed that Brazil's economy 
should grow 3% to 3.5% in 2004.  All saw the ongoing drop in 
interest rates (with the benchmark SELIC down since June 
from 26.5% to an expected 18% on November 19) producing a 
marked, steady expansion of credit.  Bradesco chief 
economist Osmar Pinho expected easing credit terms, coupled 
with traditional end-of-year bonuses and negotiated salary 
increases taking effect in January, to spark a near-term 
consumption mini-boom.  Pinho thought a modest 20% increase 
in credit from its current depressed level sufficient to 
achieve the 2004 growth figure.  Longer-term, he expected 
new investment to assume the role of central economic 
driver, pointing to Brazil's need for electrical generation 
capacity and ongoing telecom investment projects. 
 
¶5.  NOTE:  Brazil's credit stock totaled Reals 390 billion 
in September -- almost exactly 25% of GDP.  Hence, credit 
expansion of the order specified by Pinho would merely 
involve bringing the ratio back up to 30%.  That would still 
be appreciably below the 32% of early 2002, when Brazil's 
economy was already hard-hit by the contractionary effects 
of Argentina's collapse, Brazil's own energy crisis, and 
9/11.  END NOTE. 
 
¶6.  CSFB's chief economist Rodrigo Azevedo likewise believed 
the monetary stimulus from falling interest rates and 
growing credit would carry the economy through the first two 
quarters of 2004 at a 3% rate.  After that, investment would 
be needed to extend growth.  Azevedo's counterpart at Banco 
Pactual, Guilherme Bacha, volunteered the view that the CB 
ought to be lowering interest rates still more aggressively, 
to better pump early consumption.  Bacha (who reportedly was 
offered the post of CB Chairman after Lula's election but 
turned it down in the belief that the GoB would accord him 
too little authority to ensure fiscal restraint), 
acknowledged with a grin that monetary loosening was the 
last recipe he would have prescribed in the PT government's 
first months, but explained that the GoB has so conclusively 
established its credibility that bolder cuts now would be 
risk-free. 
 
¶7.  In a related vein, Central Bank (CB) Governor for 
Monetary Policy Bevilacqua noted to us that Brazil has a 
historical record of swift, strong reaction to the early 
stages of monetary easing.  Even with real interest rates 
(10-11%) still high by most standards, Brazilians have begun 
to make new buying decisions based on the CB's interest-rate 
cuts since June, averred Bevilacqua.  He was careful to 
state that the CB does not necessarily see the current 10% 
as the economy's "equilibrium" real-interest rate.  At the 
same time, he offered no hint of how fast or far the SELIC 
might fall in 2004.  Rather, he stressed the GoB's unaltered 
resolution to preempt any possible reversion to what he 
termed Brazil's past "go and stop" pattern:  too-carefree 
monetary easing fuelling good growth for a year or two, only 
to be followed by inflation's return and GDP slowdown. 
 
¶8.  Ministry of Finance Economic Policy Secretary Lisboa 
echoed Bevilacqua's thesis that the Brazilian economy reacts 
unusually quickly to interest-rate decreases.  Separately, 
however, the IMF ResRep made plain to us his own disbelief 
that a sustained wave of consumption is on Brazil's near 
horizon.  Other specialists note the likelihood that 
Brazil's much-increased current tax burden and real-income 
constraints will inhibit renewed spending far more than 
during Brazil's past historical episodes of monetary easing. 
 
¶9.  Nonetheless, some unexpectedly good recent statistics do 
accord with the GoB's optimism.  Industrial production this 
September grew nationally by 4.2%, and in Sao Paolo by 5.7%, 
compared to September 2002.  National vehicle sales in 
October were up by double-digit percentages for the second 
month in a row, admittedly helped by a recent GoB tax 
incentive.  Encouragingly for near-term investment 
implications, capital-goods sales and imports were also both 
up strongly, month-on-month.  Retail sales rose slightly in 
October, for the first time in fourteen months.  In what the 
GoB claims as further evidence of overall recovery, October 
tax revenues rose twenty percent over September's.  And Sao 
Paulo's industrial-sector employment surprised all observers 
by growing 0.5% (7,700 new jobs) in October, the best 
October result since 1994. 
 
¶10.  All private-sector contacts lavished uniform praise on 
the Lula government's macroeconomic policies for restoring 
credibility and bringing Brazil Risk (the spread above U.S. 
treasuries that Brazil must pay to borrow on international 
markets) down from over 24% in October 2002 to its current 
level of under 5.5%.  A few acknowledged that part of this 
effect was simply because expectations for macroeconomic 
policy in a Lula government had started so low. 
 
Main Hazard -- External Interest Rates 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶11.  CSFB's Azevedo and others warned that Brazil's 
financial stabilization has benefited from an unusually 
benign international environment, with developed-country 
interest rates at very low levels.  The flip side of the 
coin is that Brazil's debt-service burden (debt/GDP ratio 
still at 57%) leaves it prey to potential tightening of U.S. 
monetary policy.  That could re-ignite last year's vicious 
cycle of currency depreciation, causing foreign exchange to 
exit or avoid Brazil anew and upsetting the GOB's carefully 
balanced fiscal apple cart.  This risk may loom larger in 
light of the third-quarter U.S. growth figures. 
 
¶12.  Banco Pactual's Bacha was particularly emphatic that 
the main threat to Brazil's economic prospects in 2004-2005 
would be a too-early initiation of U.S. Fed interest-rate 
hikes.  Yes, Bacha admitted, such hikes would presumably be 
correlated with strong U.S. growth, which should fuel 
Brazilian exports.  But, he said adamantly, the financial 
downside for Brazil would far outweigh any export-demand 
benefit.  Asked at what stage U.S. interest-rate movement 
might become critical for Brazil, Bacha declined to 
quantify, opining just that world-market atmosphere at the 
time would be decisive. 
 
¶13.  In this context, minds are focused on the GoB's 
reduction of the dollar-indexed component of public debt. 
With the ongoing non-rollover of up to 12 billion dollars' 
worth of dollar-linked Brazilian domestic debt, that 
component may fall below 23% by year's end.  Continuing this 
progress through next year is essential to keeping the 
dollar-linked debt from exerting undue pressure on fiscal 
accounts when the inevitable developed-world monetary 
tightening begins.  As to overall debt-to-GDP ratio, GoB 
officials admitted that it will be marginally greater at the 
end of 2003 than a year earlier, but maintained that from 
2004 it will steadily fall. 
 
Reform Uncertainties 
-------------------- 
 
¶14.  The double-consensus of public and private sectors is 
that investment must carry growth in the longer term, and 
that that investment will hinge on macroeconomic and 
microeconomic/regulatory reforms.  The question then is how 
quickly Lula's structural reforms advance and begin to bear 
fruit. 
 
¶15.  Given the delays, watering-down and remaining 
uncertainties of Lula's macroeconomic reforms -- i.e., the 
tax and pension bills -- we repeatedly asked if the market 
might at some point deem those reforms inadequate and react 
accordingly.  The consistent answer was negative.  Analysts 
explicitly said their companies are comfortable enough with 
the two bills' status.  They agreed that their legislative 
progress has been underwhelming, and that the fiscal effect 
of each has been diluted to unimpressive dimensions.  Few 
saw the pension-reform bill as doing much more than 
"stopping the fiscal bleeding."  Alvaro Freire of Unibanco 
warned that all such politically sensitive reforms would be 
an iterative process, requiring years and multiple re- 
visits.  But the simple fact that the PT had tackled pension 
and tax reform seriously remained positive and paramount. 
 
¶16.  One GoB reform to be unconditionally applauded was the 
new bankruptcy law, recently passed and sent to the Senate 
by the lower Chamber.  Unibanco's Freire, among others, 
expected the bankruptcy law to have a fairly rapid effect in 
reducing banking spreads, although opinion was split on the 
size of that impact.  On the subject of Brazil's regulatory 
and microeconomic framework for future investment (Ref B), 
we heard a perhaps surprising lack of comment.  This applied 
most conspicuously to the future energy model and the reform 
of regulatory agencies' roles. 
 
Not Too Much of a Good Thing 
---------------------------- 
 
¶17.  Several interlocutors noted that sustained growth above 4% 
would pose its own risks.  Ministry of Finance International 
Secretary Canuto asserted that there is sufficient slack 
 
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capacity in the economy to accommodate growth on the order of 
3% to 3.5%.  Beyond that level, bottlenecks and inflation would 
rear their heads.  AmCham Economic Committee head Paulo 
Albuquerque raised a similar caveat.  GOB officials spoke of 
their aim to alleviate some of these constraints by attracting 
private investment in infrastructure through new Public Private 
Partnerships (PPP) projects. 
 
¶18.  On the external-account side, renewed Brazilian growth 
could be expected to involve a return to current-account 
deficits, as imports rise from their currently depressed levels 
and with Brazil's exporters perhaps selling a greater share of 
output to a reviving domestic market.  The standard estimate 
for these deficits, from both private economists and GoB 
specialists, was five-to-six billion dollars for 2004, and six- 
to-eight billion for 2005.  Many observers noted the need for 
extra foreign investment to bridge these gaps. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶19.  To judge from these meetings, local prognoses for 
Brazil's economy are more homogeneously positive now than at 
any time in the last two years.  We have our reservations. 
First, even granted that consumption has begun to pick up 
pre-Xmas, it seems debatable that Brazil's population has 
the income or savings for sustained buying after six 
successive years of annual real-wage decline.  Second, the 
GoB's record to date in Congress has not been such as to 
inspire confidence in early achievement of the follow-on 
"microeconomic" reforms which by general account are a pre- 
condition for vital future investment (Septel).  Third, the 
GoB itself, as Finance Minister Palocci is making newly 
clear, sees 2004 as being perhaps its most austere yet for 
discretionary budget expenditures -- no pump-priming likely 
from that quarter.  Fourth, even 3.5% growth in 2004 would 
hardly begin to make up the ground lost in national income 
and employment in 2001-2003, with that period's annual 
growth rates of 1.8%, 1.5% and perhaps 0.6%, respectively. 
 
¶20.  Even in the smoothest scenario, the timeframe for new 
jobs and income to reach the sectors of Brazil's population 
that need them most still looks far-off indeed.  It may look 
particularly so to PT party candidates and others planning 
to contest the October 2004 municipal elections. 
 
VIRDEN