Petrobras (PETR3; PETR4) and YPFB sign transition agreement whereby Bolivian company will continue to export natural gas to Brazil until March 10, 2020

Petrobras announced today that it has signed a Transition Agreement under the natural gas supply contract with Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB). Under the new agreement, the gas supply will be adopted a transition period from January 1 to March 10, 2020, in Bolivia's gas supply.

Until then, Petrobras and YPFB will "continue the negotiation process with the aim of changing certain trading conditions, in line with the opening process of the Brazilian natural gas market and the new Bolivian market context", according to the note published by the Brazilian state-owned company.

The crisis in Bolivia, which led to the overthrow of the government of Evo Morales, now in exile in Mexico, altered the negotiations between Brazil and Bolivia. Now, who is negotiating with Brazil is Bolivia's Hydrocarbon Minister, Victor Hugo Zamora, who is in Rio de Janeiro for talks with Brazilian authorities.

Bolsonaro and Evo Morales were in diametrically opposed ideological fields. Now, with the arrival of military and evangelicals in Bolivia, after a coup d'état, Brazil and Bolivia now have two governments that are very similar. Both in Brazil and Bolivia, who commands today are religious rights very close to the military forces of both countries.

It is also good to remember that 83% of the gas that Brazil imports come from Bolivia.

Cost of living in Brazil: domestic gas prices, gasoline, and ethanol rise and affect the income of Brazilian citizens

According to the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, Petrobras readjusted today "the price of cooking gas by about 5%". According to the newspaper, the price increase is valid for all types of LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), which includes domestic (for cooking) and industrial gas.

This is the fifth increase in domestic gas in 2019. The last was on November 25, when Petrobras (PETR3; PETR4) readjusted the domestic gas cylinder price by 4%.

According to a survey by the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), in the early days of December, in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, the price of cooking gas rose twice the inflation measured by the IPCA.

Already the price of ethanol in the pumps of gas stations in Brazil is the highest in the last six years. To make matters worse, the price of gasoline has also skyrocketed. Thus, fuel readjustments make life harder for Brazilians this holiday season.

2019 was a year of environmental tragedies in Brazil

The rupture of a Vale dam in Brumadinho (MG), deforestation and burning in the Amazon, and the dumping of oil on Brazilian beaches summed to the unfortunate and terrible statements of the president, Jair Bolsonaro, and the environment minister, Ricardo Salles, contributed to the aggravation of the crises.

In January, the rupture of the Vale dam at the Corrégo do Feijão in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, shocked Brazil and the world. To date, more than 260 deaths of employees of Samarco (a joint-venture between the Brazilian Vale and the English-Australian BHP, each one holding 50% of the company's stocks) and residents of the region have been confirmed. There are people that are still missing. For Greenpeace, what happened in Brumadinho was a "crime".

According to Greenpeace, "cases such as this, which may become more frequent with the easing of environmental licensing, cannot be considered accidents, but social and environmental crimes arising from greed and neglect."

Samarco itself is linked to the largest environmental disaster ever recorded in Brazil. The Mariana dam rupture in Minas Gerais killed 19 people and dumped tons of tailings polluting and destroying the Rio Doce basin and devastating the fauna and flora of the region. In the affected Rio Doce region, approximately 3.2 million people live.

According to the Repérter Brasil website, the Amazon burnings in 2019 were more frequently detected in cattle-producing regions near refrigerators than in the rest of the forest.

In 2019, the burning in the Amazon almost tripled and surpassed the historical average. Within 12 months from August 31, 2018, until August 31, 2019, 30,901 fire outbreaks were recorded compared to 10,421 fire outbreaks for the same period between 2017 and 2018, which corresponds to a 196% increase.

The disaster caused by the oil spill that hit the beaches of the Northeast and part of Southeast Brazil is still unsolved. More than 800 sites have already been hit by oil slicks on the coast. Three months after the appearance of the first spots, the origin of the oil is unknown, and no one has been indicted.

In 2019, according to Inpe, deforestation in the Brazilian Cerrado grew 15%; WWF-Brazil fears that the Cerrado is heading for a process of mass extinction unprecedented in Earth's history

According to the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, according to Prodes Cerrado data, released by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), "deforestation in the Brazilian cerrado between August 2018 and July 2019 fell slightly but remains high." 6,483 km² were devastated, with a 15% growth in deforestation in protected areas (PAs).

According to Folha, "the value is not far from the devastation seen in recent years in the Amazon, but the cerrado is about half the size of the Amazon biome.

The Cerrado biome has recently lost the equivalent of London's metropolitan area every three months, according to data released by Inpe. The loss of vegetation cover in recent years has worried environmentalists.

According to WWF-Brazil, at the rate of destruction in recent years, the Cerrado is heading for a process of mass extinction unprecedented in Earth's history.

According to Inpe, Amazon deforestation in November grows 104% and breaks the record for this month

A survey by INPE (Brazil National Institute for Space Research) found that the devastation of the Amazon rainforest biome hit a record for November. In 2019, according to Inpe, there was an increase of almost 104% of the deforested area compared to the previous year.

According to the Deter (Deforestation Detection System in the Legal Amazon in Real Time) there was an increase of 83.9% in forest devastation between January and November 2019 compared to the same period of 2018. In total, during the government From Jair Bolsonaro, the devastation of the forest went from 4,878.7 square kilometers recorded in 2019 to 8,974.31 square kilometers during the current government.

It is good to remember that following the international repercussions of the increase in deforestation reported by Inpe since July, President Jair Bolsonaro accused, without evidence, Inpe of lying about the data and dismissed the then director of the institute, Ricardo Galvão, who rebutted the criticism of the President In the end, the data showed that Galvão was right and that deforestation had really increased a lot in the region. Due to his opposition to the government and his work in defense of science, Galvão was elected by Nature magazine one of the ten most important scientists of 2019.

According to Nature magazine, Galvão "spoke out in defence of INPE scientists. He also accused the president of cowardice and called for a face-to-face meeting — acts that he knew would lead to him losing his job. What he didn’t know was that he would become a hero of sorts, hailed by his scientific colleagues as well as by strangers on the streets. A woman even stopped him on the subway in São Paulo to thank him for standing up to Bolsonaro and helping her to understand why preserving the Amazon matters".

Jair Bolsonaro's government sends the 2020 Budget to Congress; ministries of Human Rights and the Environment will have the lowest investments

According to the Congresso em Foco website, the ministries that take care of the preservation of Brazilian human rights and the environment will receive the smallest portions of the 2020 budget. The proposal was ratified yesterday by the text's rapporteur in Congress, Domingos Neto.

Confer to the ratified text, the 2020 Federal Budget will distribute R$ 225.95 billion among 16 areas. While the Ministry of Mines and Energy will receive the largest share: R$ 113.3 billion, Environment  and Human Rights will receive R$ 561.6 million and R$ 467.4 million, respectively.

Budget 2020 also set the minimum wage at R$ 1,031 (about 250 dollars in today's exchange rate). Thus, the minimum wage will have a readjustment of 3.31%, which means that there will be no real increase compared to the current value of R$ 998, only the correction of inflation of 2019.

According to ISA, president Jair Bolsonaro's speeches against Indigenous Peoples coupled with weak oversight by Ibama and the Federal Police due to the weakening of these federal agencies by the current government helped to increase deforestation on indigenous lands by 80% in 2019

A study by the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) showed that deforestation in the Amazon between August 2018 and July 2019 was higher in Indigenous lands. The Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) linked Inpe's data to Indigenous territories and found that the increase in the deforested area rises from 30% to 80% in these regions, reaching the haunting number of 42.6 thousand hectares of destroyed forest.

The ISA research shows that 51 million trees have been felled on the Amazon rainforest at Indigenous lands in these twelve months. According to the survey by ISA, the government speech by Jair Bolsonaro boosted burning and deforestation in the Amazon. The study crossed information on deforestation with statements by President Bolsonaro, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, and some governors in the region such as Gladson Cameli, governor of Acre.

Bolsonaro, who had said I will no longer demarcate even an "extra square inch of indigenous land," harshly criticized the destruction of vehicles used by illegal loggers by Ibama agents. He also dismissed the president of Inpe when the institute published figures on the increase in deforestation.

Acre Governor Gladson Cameli was recorded telling illegal loggers to "not pay" the fines imposed by the government.

Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, in turn, met with timber producers in Espigão d'Oeste, Rondônia, and highlighted the role of the timber industry in that state. Interestingly, illegal logging in the municipality of Espigão d'Oeste rose 332% in 2019.

All this happens in a year also terrible for the Indigenous peoples. According to Pastoral da Terra, in 2019, the death toll of indigenous leaders killed was the highest in the last 11 years. Of the 27 people who died in rural conflicts in Brazil this year, 7 were indigenous leaders, compared to 2 in 2018, according to the organization.

Informality advances in Brazil; low wages are now the norm in the country

High informality and low wages were the labor market scenario in Brazil in 2019. A survey by Pnad (National Household Sample Survey) indicated that unemployment fell, but with increasing informality and falling average incomes.

According to the Underground Economy Index, calculated by the Brazilian Institute of Economics of FGV (Fundação Getúlio Vargas), informality is still responsible for a significant portion of the Brazilian economy, having moved R$ 1.2 trillion in the 12 months between June 2018 and June 2019, equivalent to 17.3% of Brazilian GDP. This is the highest value in the last eight years. The growth in informality also increases the production of goods and services that are not declared to the government and the tax evasion of the country. In the 12 months between June 2018 to June 2019, the index advanced 0.1%.

This scenario is strengthened by the emergence of new forms of work, with applications that stimulate informality and expand the outsourcing of employment in Brazil.

According to the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea), informal job vacancies are responsible for much of the small generation of jobs in recent years in Brazil. Currently, the country has over 11 million unemployed. Still, according to Ipea, these new informal jobs are behind the drop in productivity and the slow recovery of the Brazilian economy after the recession from 2014 to 2016.

Another problem produced by the high informality in Brazil is the reduction in the level of social security contributions, which worsens the country's fiscal issue. In addition, informality puts people in a situation where there is no fixed income, which limits their access to credit. In informal work, the worker also loses access to any kind of legal protection, does not receive vacation, meal vouchers or transportation allowance, benefits that formal work provides.

Currently, according to IBGE data, Brazil has 38.8 million informal workers. This total is 41% of the total employed persons in Brazil (93.8 million), that is, they represent 4 out of 10 Brazilian workers.

Even with a 29.5% increase in the number of fires in the Amazon, the number of fines imposed by IBAMA in 2019 in Brazil is the lowest in the last 15 years

As published by the G1 website, a survey by the Observatório do Clima based on data from the Brazilian government indicates that amid the 29.5% increase in deforestation and increasing Amazonian burning in 2019, the fines filed by the Brazilian Institute Environment (Ibama) went against environmental crimes. The infraction notices registered from January to November 2019 are the lowest in the last 15 years.

These areas, for the most part, are “forests are public, that is, it is the heritage of all Brazilians, which is illegally dilapidated to be in the hands of a few,” according to Ipam executive director André Guimarães.

Also according to an analysis by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam), 35% of the deforestation that occurred in the Amazon between August 2018 and July 2019 was recorded in unassigned areas and without information. According to Ipam, 35% of the deforestation that occurs in the Amazon is the result of land grabbing. In 2019, the devastation was the biggest in ten years and had the biggest high of the century.

Selic reaches 4.5% per year, the lowest level in history in Brazil and generates demand for new applications; meanwhile, Brazilian consumer continues to pay 300% interest on credit card per year

The Brazilian Central Bank cut the Selic rate by 0.50 percentage points to 4.5% per year. This is the lowest level in the history of the basic interest rates of the Brazilian economy. Now, Brazilian financial market experts point out that traditional investments such as savings, and Selic-linked Treasury Direct bonds are expected to post negative returns.

Currently, in Brazil, 85% of the current account balance is concentrated in four large banks. This oligopoly of banks forced the overdraft limit to the absurd levels that are in force today in Brazil.

According to the master of economics from the University of São Paulo, Mauricio Gutemberg, as there is no broad and significant competition in the financial sector in Brazil, market forces do not produce a balance. Instead, what you see is interest rates on your credit card and overdraft that are way above any acceptable level.

It was trying to reduce these abusive interest rates that the Brazilian Central Bank decided to limit interest on overdraft. From January 6, 2020, they will be at most 8% per month. With this, the annual interest will have a ceiling of 150% in Brazil. Today, the average rate is over 300% per year.

Brazil falls in UN human development ranking

In 2018, Brazil lost a position in the global ranking of the Human Development Index (HDI). The overall grade for the country was 0.761, up 0.001 from the previous year. Despite the advance, Brazil fell from 78th to 79th place in a group of 189 countries. Thus it was the same position of Colombia and behind countries like Sri Lanka and Argentina.

The Index, released by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) from health, education and per capita income data, shows that Brazil is a country with no long-term planning. The country is positioned worldwide as a supplier of commodities: oil, soy, meat, sugar cane, iron ore etc. There are no long-term projects to improve income distribution, create jobs and advance education.

Incidentally, the drop also indicates the lack of progress in education, in which Brazil is in 79th place, which produces the lack of skilled labor and, in turn, acts as a trap that holds the country in a context. of little growth.

In recent years, the Brazilian Human Development Index (HDI) was virtually stagnant in 2018, after showing low growth in previous years.

Brazil: poverty grows and inequality increases

According to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), Brazil's GDP grew by 1.3% in 2018. The latest Focus Bulletin, published last Monday by the Brazilian Central Bank, pointed out that Brazil's GDP growth in 2019 should be around 1.1%. Therefore, if all goes as expected by the experts from the top 100 financial institutions in the Brazilian market, which make up the Focus Bulletin, 2019 will have a lower GDP growth than 2018.

This scenario allows us to say that the Brazilian economy continues at a very slow recovery pace. As the Brazilian GDP advances with very little vigor, it seems that the country's economy should recover pre-crisis level only in 2022.

According to the technical director of Dieese (Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies), Clemente Ganz Lúcio, if the Brazilian economy continues at this pace, it will take a decade for the country to recover the level of employment that existed before the crisis that began in 2013.

Currently, Brazil has 12.4 million jobless people, a rate of 11.6%.

According to Rafael Guerreiro Osório, a researcher at the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea), the country's performance in the areas of income distribution and education pushed performance down. For Osorio, "we are not doing well in education. And this year, we have not seen a proposition of educational policy that promises extraordinary results, if any. In life expectancy, there is no way to change much from one year to another. So the hope would be for income, but our situation today will keep us close to the middle of the ranking." Brazil occupies the 79th position among 189 evaluated nations.

To make matters worse, Brazil has won the terrible title of runner-up in the world this year, second only to Qatar.

According to the newspaper O Estado de Minas, "Brazil is the second most unequal country in the world among those who provide estimates based on tax data, second only to Qatar"

In Brazil, 1% of the richest population (about 1.5 million people) concentrates 23.2% of the share of total income declared by individuals to income tax (in Qatar the richest 1% concentrates about 27% of total declared income).

According to The State of Minas, "the income concentration of this small group of rich people in Brazil is 164% higher than in Sweden, where the one hundredth richest share accounts for 8.8% of the total income. Sweden, from the 1930s until recently, saw the income share of the richest hundredth shrink from 12.3% to 8.8%, in Brazil, over the last nine decades, the distribution pattern has shown a steady and persistent concentration: 1% richer answered between 20% and 25% of the total income".

However, part of the Brazilian financial market, media, and government analysts insist that the Brazilian economy is growing again. For the thousands of Brazilian unemployed and underemployed, this kind of analysis is a kind of derision. For the thousands of Brazilian unemployed and underemployed, this kind of analysis is a kind of derision. While most face a day-to-day world record in homicide, hate crime, incarceration, state violence, unemployment and lack of prospects, part of the country's richest 1% insists that everything is getting better.

Observatório do Clima study shows that deforestation accounted for almost half of greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil

According to Jornal Nacional, Brazil's largest television news program, the smoke from car exhaust or power plants is not the biggest polluter of the Brazilian atmosphere. The big villain in this regard is deforestation in Brazilian forests, which accounted for 44% of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions in 2018, according to a study by the Observatório do Clima, which brings together 43 civil society organizations.

In August 2019 alone, the Amazon rainforest lost 1,698 square kilometers of vegetation, according to Inpe (National Institute for Space Research of Brazil).

This represents a 222% growth over the same period in 2018. In August 2018, it was 526 square kilometers. In the first eight months of 2019, the deforested area was 92% higher than in the same period of 2018.

According to economists interviewed by Reuters, the historic low-interest rates and the devaluation of the real against the dollar threaten to accelerate deforestation in the Amazon, as they are both favorable to agribusiness growth in the country. This, coupled with the lax oversight by the Jair Bolsonaro government, puts the Amazon rainforest at grave risk.

Real estate funds break the record in Brazil, grow 25% in 2019, and raise R$ 32.5 billion until November of this year

The year 2019 represented a milestone for the real estate funds market in Brazil. The volume of new issues, the largest in history according to Anbima (Brazilian Association of Financial and Capital Markets Entities), reached R$ 32.5 billion until November, more than double the previous record of R$ 16.1. billion, launched in 2011, or of R$ 16.1 billion by 2018. According to the Valor Investe website, the Brazilian Securities Commission (CVM) still has R$ 2.9 billion, in 12 offers, under analysis.

According to the Valor Investe website, to date, IFIX, the index of real estate funds traded on the Brazilian stock exchange, has appreciated 25%. There are more than 200 FIIs traded on B3, although the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) has registered about 478 funds that together add up to R$ 121 billion in equity, according to a bulletin released by B3 in November.

Amazon rainforest deforestation affects rainy season in Brazil and harms farmers; soybean and corn production are the most affected

A survey by two researchers from the Federal University of Viçosa, Minas Gerais, and one from the University of California, United States, and published by the Royal Meteorological Society points out that large-scale replacement of the Amazon rainforest by pasture or planting areas is reducing rainfall in regions such as the Brazilian Midwest.

Between 1998 and 2002, the rainy season in the region, comprising Rondônia, southern Amazonas, northern Mato Grosso, and southern Pará, was shortened by 27 days. This has a huge impact on the Brazilian double-crop, in some cases practically making the second harvest impossible. In Brazil, farmers plant soybeans and then corn on the same ground. Without the rain, planting corn after soybean harvesting is practically unfeasible.

According to consultancy AgRural, in 2019, the ideal planting period (window) for the Brazilian corn crop in 2020 should be shorter, as the irregularity of rainfall in recent weeks has caused soybean sowing to be delayed by several parts of the South Central States of the Country.

Deforestation in the Amazon grows over 200% in August 2019 compared to August of 2018; illegal and uncontrolled logging in the region increases risks of disease and pandemics

According to the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), the Amazon rainforest has lost 1,698 square kilometers of vegetation. In August 2018, there were 526 square kilometers. In the first eight months of 2019, the deforested area reached 6,404 square kilometers (92% higher than in the same period of 2018), and 30,901 fire outbreaks were recorded in the Amazon biome in this period.

In the Amazon, 35% of deforestation cases occur in land grabbing areas in public forests, parks or public areas without a destination. This is what reveals a study by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).

According to National Geographic Brazil, deforestation is causing an increase in infectious diseases in humans. According to scientists interviewed by the magazine, with the increase in the felling of forests around the world, grows the "fear that the next deadly pandemic may arise from within these environments."

According to the National Geographic report, over the past two decades, increasing scientific evidence suggests that deforestation, by initiating a complex chain of events, creates conditions for spreading a wide range of deadly pathogens among humans, including, the Nipah and Lassa viruses, and the parasites that cause malaria and Lyme disease.

Amazon Rainforest fires will have global effect according to Unicamp Chemistry Institute research

According to site G1, a study by researchers at the Unicamp Chemistry Institute (IQ) in the city of Campinas, São Paulo, "identified that burning in the Amazon rainforest, in addition to impacts on climate and biodiversity, is responsible for release 4 to 8 tonnes of mercury per year, a highly toxic element".

Therefore, the study revealed that, in addition to the terrible destruction of the Amazon biome, the burning in the region causes high emissions of mercury in the atmosphere, a highly toxic element to living beings.

According to Professor and researcher Anne Hélène Fostier, since the substance can wander for up to a year until it is deposited anywhere on the planet. Therefore, the impact of the fires on the Amazon Rainforest will be global.

Anne Hélène Fostier, who is an oceanographer, warns that once released into the atmosphere, mercury can go into the soil or water bodies. In rivers, lakes, and oceans the harmful element goes through a process of methylation, which makes it even more toxic.

The research explains that this process generates methylation, which in turn happens in the environment by biological means and transforms inorganic mercury into organic, especially methylmercury, one of the most toxic forms of this element.

According to Fostier, "when methylmercury is incorporated into the food chain, the risks of intoxication are very high. It is a threat, especially to riparian populations, who find their main protein source in fish."

BNDES will sell R$ 38.8 billion in shares in 2020; Petrobras (PETR3; PETR4), JBS (JBSS3). and Copel (CPLE6) are among the shares that will be sold

BNDES has set an initial schedule for the next four equity offerings it will make in 2020, as part of its divestment program, according to the Valor Econômico newspaper. The plan is to sell JBS 'second tranche of shares, a relevant stake in Petrobras, Copel's and Tupy's, which, considering current values, represent sales of R$ 30.8 billion.

According to Valor, the idea of BNDES is to reduce its portfolio of about R$ 120 billion of investments and stakes, reaching the nearest zero in the next three years.

Trump's message on Twitter saying his administration will impose tariffs on steel and aluminum production of Brazil and Argentina shows how disconnected from the reality is the Bolsonaro government, and that the much-vaunted partnership with the US has proved to be pure wishful thinking

In a message posted on Twitter, the president of the United States, Donald Trump,  accuses Brazil and Argentina of devaluing their currencies and thereby harming US farmers. According to the president of the United States, his government will retaliate against Brazil and Argentina by reinstating import tariffs on steel and aluminum from both countries.

Thus, the US government indicates how unrealistic the current Brazilian government is. Jair Bolsonaro, who even said "I love you" to Trump after the Brazilian president's speech and before the American's speech at the UN General Assembly on September 25 in New York, now faces open retaliation by Donald Trump, until then the leader Bolsonaro considered his great partner.

According to the Poder360 website, "in the steel alloys category alone, Brazil exported 1.2 billion dollars in 2018 and 850 million dollars in 2019. Brazil is one of the largest exporters of steel to the United States."

According to economist Laura Carvalho, "Trump will take advantage of the high dollar to put tariffs on our products. That is, we will suffer the inflationary impact of the devaluation of the real without even reaping possible benefits on export performance. Who has a friend like Trump not need enemies".

Today, leaving the Alvorada Palace, Bolsonaro commented on Trump's decision to raise tariffs on Brazilian steel: “I will talk to Paulo Guedes, if I speak to Trump, I have an open channel with him”.