Dollar Closes at R$5.45 One Day After Brazilian Secretaries Leave

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The day after the announced departure of two Secretaries from the Ministry of Economy, the dollar climbed and the stock market closed virtually stable. On Wednesday, August 12th, the commercial dollar closed at R$5.453, up R$0.038 (+0.7 percent).

The Brazilian Real broke away from other currencies and lost value following the confirmed resignations of the Special Secretaries of Privatization, Disinvestment, and Markets, Salim Mattar, and of Debureaucratization, Management, and Digital Government, Paulo Uebel. On Tuesday evening, the Minister of Economy Paulo Guedes described their departure as “a stampede”.

At around 3 PM, the dollar reached R$5.49, but lost steam after the Central Bank (BC) intervened in the market. The monetary authority auctioned US$1 billion in foreign exchange swap contracts, which are equivalent to the sale of dollars in the futures market. In all, there were two auctions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

This was the first time since May 19th that the monetary authority auctioned new swap contracts. Since then, the Central Bank had only been rolling over (renewing) the outstanding swap contracts, without injecting new shares into the market.

In the stock market, the IBOVESPA index, of the B3 (the Brazilian stock exchange), closed slightly down. After rising in the morning, the indicator began to drop in the afternoon and recovered close to the session’s end, closing with a slight drop of 0.06 percent, to 102,118 points.

Source: Agência Brasil

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