Analysts expect Brazil’s economy to contract by 3.62% this year, with inflation hitting 10.61%, the Central Bank said Monday. GDP and inflation estimates come from the Boletin Focus, a weekly Central Bank survey of analysts from about 100 private financial institutions on the state of the national economy.
The government started using the survey in preparing its own forecasts this year.
Last week, analysts expected Brazil’s economy to contract by 3.50% and the inflation rate to come in at 10.44%. In 2016, analysts now expect Latin America’s largest economy to contract by 2.67%, with the inflation rate falling to 6.80%.
If the forecasts turn out to be accurate, Brazil will go through two consecutive years of negative GDP growth for the first time since 1948. Brazil is in a recession, with GDP contracting for two consecutive quarters.
Brazil’s economy contracted by 2.1% in the first half of this year.
Economic growth has also been hampered by the spending cuts implemented by President Dilma Rousseff’s administration to reduce the budget deficit and control inflation.