SAO PAULO (AP) – Brazil’s economy grew 2.9 per cent in 2023, beating expectations in the first year of the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, according to the government statistics institute on Friday.
The number announced by IBGE impressed many economists, whose overall forecast early last year was for only 0.8 per cent growth in 2023. Brazil’s economy grew three per cent in 2022, partly due to government spending programmes pushed by then-President Jair Bolsonaro amid his failed reelection bid.
The credit rating agency Austin Ratings said Brazil’s economy is now the ninth biggest in the world, based on the preliminary gross domestic product numbers announced on Friday.
Reaching USD2.17 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP) last year moved the South American nation ahead of Canada and Russia, it said. The Brazilian statistics agency said Brazil’s record production of soybeans and corn helped the overall results. “Agriculture represented about a third of all the growth of Brazil’s economy last year,” a coordinator at IBGE Rebeca Palis said in a statement.
The government said after the results that it expects 2024 growth to be at 2.2 per cent, which would again above market expectations.
Lula has said in public forums he wants to push the number above three per cent this year by drawing more foreign investment to Brazil.
