Brazil lowers 2011 growth projection to 3.5%

Brazil's central bank lowered its projection for economic growth this year to 3.5 percent due to the worsening global economic outlook -- less than half of growth seen last year. "No country is immune to the consequences of the crisis," President Dilma Rousseff said in a television interview on Thursday, but insisted her government was working hard so that Brazil's economy would be "better protected". "The fact that Brazilians are consuming, have income, have work -- that will protect Brazil," she said. In its quarterly report, the central bank revised down its growth projection to 3.5 percent, from the 4.0 percent forecast it gave in June. It also raised its 2011 inflation forecast to 6.4 percent from its June estimate of 5.8 percent. The bank said "the deterioration in the international outlook" and the more restrictive fiscal policies adopted by the government were factors in the downward revision. The Brazilian economy grew 7.5 percent last year, in full recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. The bank said inflation peaked in August at 7.23 percent. For 2012, the bank estimates that inflation will fall to 4.7 percent and that by the third quarter of 2013 will hit the 4.5 percent goal. The bank's Monetary Policy Committee thinks that there could be further "moderate" cuts to the basic interest rate, which was lowered in August from 12.5 percent to 12 percent.