By Stephen Eisenhammer, Senior Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The U.S. dollar, as well as Bovespa, Sao Paulo’s stock exchange, were both up Monday. The dollar continued to rise against the Brazilian real, up 1.18 percent to R$2.041 to buy and to R$2.043 to sell, reaching a high of R$2.05 during the day.
President Dilma Rousseff and finance minister Guido Mantega have been battling with an overvalued real, which has hit exports. Mantega has affirmed that he believes the current exchange rate, if it can be maintained, will boost Brazilian industry.
Brazil’s official forecasts for GDP this year is 4.5 percent. Some analysts, however, have said that the depreciation has come too late to rescue the growth rate for 2012, revising forecasts to around 3.2 percent. Credit Suisse have even more conservative predictions at 2.5 percent.
The day’s trading also saw the Bovespa jump 3.81 percent, to 56,590 points, recuperating from Friday’s fall, as investors returned to Brazil’s top stocks, oil major Petrobras and mining giant Vale. The Brazilian oil company OGX was also a strong performer.
Analysts said the rise was a readjustment from the falls of last week, when eight percent was wiped off the Bovespa.
“It is still too early to say whether this jump is trend reversal or not, because there is still a lot of uncertainty going forward, at least until the elections in Greece on June 17th,” Roberto Monteiro, a trader at Renascença, told Globo.
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