No annual fee is the main attraction for the Brazilian customer to choose a credit card, regardless of income, shows a study by MCKinsey & Company. According to the survey, for 33% of people with an income of up to R$4,000, this is the main attribute to select the issuer, as is the opinion of 38% of those with an income between R$4,100 and R$10,000 and for 37% who have an income above R$10,000. The study mapped the use of means of payment in the country through interviews with 5,347 consumers, considering the representativeness of the population in the region, income level and age.
Six months after the Brazilian government authorized the direct participation of foreign companies in public bids, 123 companies from other countries have registered to participate in disputes in the country. Most are from the United States – 24 in all. Next come Germany, with 22, and the United Kingdom, with seven. India and China appear in the ranking with six companies each. According to data from the Economy Ministry, these suppliers have won 11 bids, totaling about R$156 million so far. The amounts are still small if compared to the total turnover of these operations – almost R$30 billion from October until now.
Eldorado Brasil is negotiating a bilateral loan with major Brazilian and foreign banks, sources say. The goal is to pay off a $350 million bond in two months. At the end of last year, the company had R$950 million in cash and cash equivalents, half the value of the debt that matures in June. In total, the pulp producer’s debt maturing in 2021 reaches R$5.6 billion. An important part of that, however, corresponds to export financing lines, which are usually rolled over. The greatest pressure comes from bonds issued in 2016.
Brazilian rice exports totaled 104,400 tonnes in March, the first month of the 2020/21 marketing year of the crop, 24.1% more than in the same month of 2020. According to data from the Secretariat of Foreign Trade (Secex) compiled by the Brazilian Rice Industry Association (Abiarroz), the revenue from shipments had a 28.4% increase, to $31.24 million. In the commercial year ended in February, Brazil exported 1.77 million tonnes, the highest in nine years – due to the increase in world consumption during the Covid-19 pandemic and because of a favorable exchange rate.
Vale shares have hit record after record in recent weeks and are now consolidating at levels above R$100, practically doubling in value since 2020. Asset managers and analysts say the Brazilian mining company still operates at a discount of approximately 30% in relation to global peers, which opens room for further gains. This gap should not be closed overnight and there is a certain skepticism about the size of the appreciation cycle of iron ore. In addition, the company is still struggling to extricate itself from the tragedies in Mariana and Brumadinho. On the other hand, demand for iron ore is high because the global economy is recovering.
The number of fintechs authorized to operate by the Brazilian Central Bank grew approximately 76% in nine months. In March of 2021, there were 53 of these companies authorized to operate in the country, according to a presentation made Thursday by the president of the monetary authority, Roberto Campos Neto. In a balance sheet released in June 2020 by the BC, there were 30 fintechs. “The number of requests [for authorization] has increased a lot. Sometimes we even have difficulties to approve with the same agility. We have made a great effort,” Mr. Campos said in a virtual event organized by the Brazilian Association of Fintechs.
The Brazilian government on Wednesday (Apr. 14) published the Amazon Plan 2021/2022, establishing guidelines for monitoring efforts and the fight against illegal deforestation, wildfire, and other environmental and property-related crimes in the Legal Amazon region—which encompasses the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, and a portion of Maranhão.
The initiative describes measures that should be taken to replace Operation Brazil Green, which has deployed agents of the Armed Forces since 2019 in preventive and repressive efforts against environmental offenses, and will be brought to an end on April 30. Just as Operation Brazil Green, the Amazon Plan will be spearheaded by the National Legal Amazon Council, chaired by Brazil’s vice-President Hamilton Mourão.
By means of coordinated and integrated efforts by ministries and regulating agencies, the Amazon Plan 2021/2022 includes among its goals to reduce, by 2022, the number of fires and instances of illegal deforestation to the historic average of 2016–2020, as gauged by the satellite of the Project for the Satellite Monitoring of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (Prodes), of the National Institute of Space Studies (INPE).
In addition to stepping up inspection efforts and strengthening environmental agencies, the plan aims to prioritize areas with higher environmental crime rates and to offer social and economic alternatives to the local population under the sustainable development principle.
In a publication on social media, Climate Observatory criticized the goals unveiled in the Amazon Plan. According to the entity, the deforested area set as the government’s target will continue being larger than it was under previous administrations.
The Amazon Plan 2021/2022 was published a week before the Leaders’ Summit on Climate, organized by US President Joe Biden, who invited 30 heads of state and government, including President Jair Bolsonaro. The meeting is slated to be held online on April 22. In November, the 26th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations on Climate Change (COP26) should be held in Glasgow, Scotland.
The April IPOs season is being marked by low prices. So far this month, no company has managed to sell shares in the desired price range. Hospital network Mater Dei, for instance, had to accept a 20% discount on Wednesday to move forward with its IPO. In addition, a study by consulting firm Álvarez & Marsal (A&M) with 33 IPOs held in the second half of 2020 until March shows that 20 offerings (60% of the total) have come out at the floor or below the price range initially suggested. Among these 20 companies, 13 underperformed Ibovespa or were just in line with the benchmark stock index. Among the remaining 13 offerings, 11 sold their shares at the center of the range.
States have been resorting to their own funds to fill the gap created by the lack of a formal proposal from the federal government to reissue aid programs for micro and small businesses. In the absence of programs such as BEm and Pronampe to alleviate the effects of the pandemic, state governments are offering extraordinary lines of credit or emergency aid. At least 15 have already offered or announced some kind of relief measure, totaling R$1.7 billion. Despite the efforts of the governments, the amount is far below that offered by the federal government in May last year.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recommended that the Brazilian government put an end to deforestation, as one of the “new priorities” in a list of reforms for the country. This is an additional signal for the Bolsonaro administration to review its environmental policy, condemned on the international scene. European countries, starting with France, and now more and more the United States under Joe Biden’s administration, will only accept the OECD to start formal negotiations for the country to enter the entity if Brasília takes concrete actions to protect forests.
