UN hunger fight projects resources halted due to lack of approval from the Brazilian Ministry of Economy; Fight against hunger in Brazil suffers from the government of a president who insists that this problem does not exist or is very small in the country

Brazil has over 45 million dollars in hunger-fighting projects that are stalled. These resources could finance projects through the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN agency to fight rural poverty and hunger. Investments, however, have not been halted since 2018 due to lack of approval by the foreign finance commission of the Ministry of Economy led by Paulo Guedes.

The main difficulty in allowing the release is the Union's inability to repay, which cannot be a guarantor of loans.

On July 19, at a coffee shop with international correspondents in Brasilia, President Jair Bolsonaro said that Brazil did not suffer from the problem of hunger. On the same day, Brazil's president's statement on hunger in the country was rebutted by data and experts.

In this coffee, with the journalists, Bolsonaro said: "Talking about starving in Brazil is a big lie". Later that day, pressured by the flood of criticism he received inside and outside the country, Bolsonaro turned back and said only a "small part" of the population suffered from hunger. In fact, more than 5 million people suffer from the scourge of hunger in Brazil.

However, the UN Food and Nutrition Security Outlook Panorama Report 2018, released in November by the UN, showed the rise in hunger in Brazil. The study estimated that malnutrition reached up to 5.2 million Brazilians between 2015 and 2017, compared to the 5.1 million estimated for the three years 2014-2016 and 2013-2015. In the 2000-2002 triennium, 18.8 million Brazilians suffered from hunger. 

This meaningless debate started by the president is a catastrophe for the hunger control programs in Brazil. Meanwhile, other less urgent projects are being tabled by this government, for example the decree to facilitate gun possession or the project that eliminates fines for transporting children without car seats or starting studies to include the terms "father" and "mother" rather than "parents" in the fields intended for membership in the Brazilian passport documentation.

Meanwhile, major resources for fighting hunger in the countryside have been stalled since 2018 because the country has not paid back a loan to the Union.

This indicates that the current government does not know what the country's real priorities are and continues to spend time and resources on debates that are completely innocuous.

Guajajaras and Awá tribes unite in Brazil to protect the forest from fire and deforestation

With their lands under constant attacks by loggers, the tribes of Guajajaras and Awás united in Maranhão to protect the forest.

In total there are more than 14 thousand Guajajaras Indians from more than 150 villages. In recent months, they have come into contact with the Awás, a tribe that lived in isolation within the forest.

Filmmaker Flay Guajajara has produced a film, "Ka'a Zar Ukyze Wà - The Owners of the Forest in Danger", to be released today, in Sao Paulo, which shows the meeting of the two tribes.

Located in the Araribóia indigenous land in Maranhão, they are one of the last hunter and gatherer peoples in the world and, according to experts, may have their days numbered if the destruction of the forest does not stop.

Now with Jair Bolsonaro's government, deforestation is growing to frightening levels.

China reopens its market for Brazilian milk powder and cheese

The Minister of Agriculture of Brazil, Tereza Cristina, today celebrated the decision of China, the largest importer of dairy products in the world. According to her, Brazil produces about 600 million tons of milk powder.

The Brazilian dairy sector can benefit greatly from this decision. This will raise the price of the bed in Brazil and strengthen this sector of the Brazilian economy.

In August, the minister of agriculture of Brazil should visit China for new talks.

Cost of living in Brazil: fall in fuel prices causes the Extended National Consumer Price Index 15 (IPCA-15) to rise only 0.09% in July

Increases in airfare and electricity prices in Brazil were not sufficient to produce a big rise in inflation in July 2019. The Broad National Consumer Price Index 15 (IPCA-15) rose 0.09% in July after registering an even lower growth of 0.06% in June. The main factor for this very small growth was the fall in fuel prices.

With a stable IPCA, several Brazilian economists are betting on a 0.25% reduction in the basic interest rates of the economy (Selic). IPCA closes June up just 0.01%, reflecting weak demand and the contraction in food and fuel prices. Without cost-of-living pressure, analysts are predicting a drop of at least 0.25 percentage points in the Selic rate at the next Copom meeting in the last two days of July. Currently, the Selic rate is at 6.5% per year.

With Selic at this level in Brazil, fixed-income investments such as savings, floating-rate CDBs, DI funds, and Selic Treasury bonds pay less, as their yields are pegged to the Selic rate.

Jair Bolsonaro criticizes Brazilian institute that collects data on deforestation of the Amazon rainforest

Following the release by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) of Deter (Real-Time Deforestation Detection) data, President Jair Bolsonaro said Inpe's research is "negative propaganda abroad" that put Brazil "in a complicated situation." Bolsonaro seems to defend bullying as a public policy. He called Inpe's director a liar, said he's in NGO service.

According to Inpe, deforestation in the Amazon in June 2019 was 88% higher than in the same period in 2018. During this period, deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon reached 920.4 km².

President Bolsonaro's criticism led the scientific community to openly defend Inpe work. The president of the Institute, Ricardo Galvão, said that Bolsonaro took a "pusillanimous and cowardly attitude". For Galvão, the rudeness of the president, who said the Institute was lying, were statements that to him seem more like "talk at the bar".

Preliminary satellite data from Inpe show that more than 1,000 km² of Amazon rainforest was cleared in the first half of this month, equivalent to a 68% increase over July 2018.

Banco Santander (SAN) decides to replicate Brazilian fintech Superdigital in other countries

Bank Santander has announced that it will replicate in other countries the model of Superdigital - Brazilian fintech (financial technology) that offers services such as transfers, payments and prepaid card. Superdigital aims to reach 5 million customers in Latin America by 2023. The goal is to bring the business model that fintech adopts in Brazil to Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Created in 2012, Superdigital received investments from Santander in 2014. Then, in 2016, fintech was fully controlled by the bank. Not long ago, Superdigital arrived in Chile.

This growth shows that the Brazilian banking sector has decided to expand digital banking. There are already some European fintechs coming to the Brazilian financial market and some midsize banks are transforming with new technologies. Analysts, however, say there will be no room for all companies. Therefore, the sector in Brazil should soon face a phase of consolidation.

With Superdigital Santander wants to operate in the cloud and fully online. This decision indicates an important behavior change in the financial market. By the end of 2019, Santander wants to launch the Pi Platform that will allow it to buy and sell ETF shares and real estate funds via the internet.

Brazilian financial market raises GDP projection to 2019 for the first time in 20 weeks

The Focus report, published by the Brazilian Central Bank every Monday, indicates that projections by Brazilian financial market analysts estimate GDP growth to be 0.81% to 0.82% by 2019. The same analysts consulted by the Brazilian Central Bank continue betting on the growth of 2.10% of the Brazilian GDP in 2020.

The change is related to the approval of the first shift of the Pension Reform by the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil. Even so, the performance of the Brazilian economy is still very poor. Many analysts expect the government to present some kind of measure that could warm the Brazilian economy a bit more.

Economists lowered the estimate for the Brazilian official inflation index (IPCA), which was down to 3.78%. A week ago it was at 3.82%. This year's central target is 4.25%, with a tolerance of 1.5 percentage points to more or less.

Many analysts believe that the Central Bank should, at the next Monetary Policy Committee meeting (Copom), which takes place in the last two days of July 2019, should lower the Selic rate of the Brazilian economy that is now at 6, 5% per annum.

Hashtag #OrgulhoDoNordeste grows on Twitter after an unfortunate statement from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro

After a microphone capture a biased speech of President Jair Bolsonaro against the population of the Brazilian Northeast, Twitter was taken by innumerable criticisms to the figure of Jair Bolsonaro. Last Friday (19.Jul.2019), Bolsonaro used a pejorative term to refer to the governors of the region during an informal conversation with Minister Onyx Lorenzoni.

Several Brazilian artists, politicians, and journalists have spoken publicly against the president's speech. Many of them recorded videos or wrote on Twitter strongly criticizing the conduct of Jair Bolsonaro.

In commenting on the fact, Bolsonaro stated that he was not referring to the people of the Northeast in general. He said that the pejorative term was addressed to the governors of Maranhão, Flávio Dino, and Paraíba, João Azevêdo, two politicians of the Brazilian left.

Bolsonaro, therefore, did not apologize for the use of a pejorative word.

Tokio Marine, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citibank believe that the Pension Reform will bring improvements to the Brazilian economic scenario

According to the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, financial institutions believe that, after the approval of the Pension Reform, Brazil should start a cycle of economic growth, with new cuts in interest rates.

This, for example, is the thinking of the president of the Japanese insurer Tokio Marine in Brazil, José Adalberto Ferrara. He told the state that the reform, passed in the first round of the Chamber of Deputies, could mark a new cycle of economic growth in Brazil on a sustainable basis.

According to the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, financial institutions believe that, after the approval of the Pension Reform, Brazil should start a cycle of economic growth, with new cuts in interest rates.

This, for example, is the thinking of the president of the Japanese insurer Tokio Marine in Brazil, José Adalberto Ferrara. He told the state that the reform, passed in the first round of the Chamber of Deputies, could mark a new cycle of economic growth in Brazil on a sustainable basis.

The newspaper also indicates that Goldman Sachs believes that the Reforma could generate a saving of R $ 900 billion in Brazilian public accounts. JP Morgan is betting that the Brazilian Central Bank should cut basic interest rates (Selic), currently at 6.5%, at 0.5% in the next two Copom meetings. This would bring the Brazilian economy's basic interest rate to 5.5% in September. Citibank believes that there will be a reduction of 0.25 percentage points in Selic this month.

However, in the real world, Brazil's investment rate is the lowest in more than 50 years. A survey conducted by economist Manoel Pires, coordinator of the Fiscal Policy Observatory of the Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Ibre/FGV), shows that the public investment rate fell from 4.06% in 2013 to 1.85% in 2017 (the lowest level ever recorded in the country), to 2.43% in 2018. The rate of private investment has fallen in the last 5 years, falling from 16.85% in 2013 to 13.39% in 2018.

Unemployment insurance in Brazil is one of the smallest in the developed world

According to a study of Applied Economic Research (Ipea), the Brazilian unemployment insurance program is one of the smallest in the world developed in aspects such as values, rules of operation and comprehensiveness. The research carried out by Ipea analyzed the systems of 97 countries where there is some kind of benefit. In addition to being among the lowest in the group, the effective coverage rate has been falling in recent years, due to the growth of unemployment. Between 2015 and 2018, the percentage of Brazilian unemployed who received the benefit fell from 7.8% to 4.8%.

The economist Newton Marques says unemployment is one of the worst problems in the Brazilian economy today. He believes that only if "the government makes an economic policy that can resume the economic activity of the country as a whole" this situation will tend to be minimized. However, so far, there is no government measure directly geared towards job creation.

Brazil breaks the historical record of small business defaults

According to a survey conducted by Serasa Experian, the number of micro and small enterprises (MPEs) defaulting in Brazil reached a new record in May 2019, surpassing 5.4 million. This record is a direct result of the current stagnation of the Brazilian economy.

This is the highest level of the historical series, which began in March 2016. Services (10.5%), industry (2.4%) and trade (2.2%) were the sectors with the highest increase in the annual comparison.

In this scenario of paralysis of the Brazilian economy, the country's main banks continue to charge one of the largest spreads on the planet and cut credit lines.

Although current Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said that economic growth should "begin to be positive in the second quarter" of 2019, many analysts indicate that the Social Security Reform is not intended to provide economic growth but to reduce the hole left by Pension plan in public accounts year after year. 

Contrary to the government's assertion, the Pension Reform may have a recessive effect on the Brazilian economy if there is no significant increase in investments in the country in the second half of 2019.