Brazil’s slow recovery, forecast downgrades, rate cuts

The Brazilian Q4 GDP data released this week confirmed that the economy fell short of expectations again in 2019 and, with the coronavirus likely to weigh on the economy over the coming months, we’ve revised down our 2020 GDP growth forecast. We’ve also downgraded our forecasts for the rest of the region. Concerns about the virus, as well as the Fed’s emergency cut this week, mean that we now expect interest rate cuts by most major Latin American central banks over the next few weeks.