Brazil´s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is having the time of his life at the moment. Barely a day goes by when he does not pop up in some part of the country like a latter-day Harold MacMillan telling everyone that they have never had it so good. He gives the same old speech – no more hunger, booming economy, falling unemployment, new jobs – occasionally throwing an extra ingredient in – damning the “elite” which can´t stand the idea of a son of the soil like him being President or highlighting the virtues of his right-hand woman, Dilma Rousseff, the “mother” of the Accelerated Growth program which is apparently going to resolve all the outstanding problems facing Brazil. Lula recently got a new arrow to add to his bow when the rating agency Standard & Poor´s announced that it was granting Brazil “investment grade” status i.e. that it is in a good position to pay off its debt. Lula said the news showed that Brazil was a “serious” country. It would be interesting to know how Lula defines being “serious” since he subsequently announced that he had not known what investment grade meant and thought it was a kind of ice cream. I assure you reader I am not making this up.

by Miguel Jorge

The model which Brazil adopted to develop the economy of the Amazon region when it founded the Free Trade Zone centered in Manaus has been in force for just over 40 years. In that time, thousands of companies from all over the world and the rest of Brazil have taken advantage of the tax benefits and set up assembly and production plants. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been created and Manaus has been transformed into a thriving commercial city which attracts businessmen as well as tourists to the Amazon. In this article, journalist Miguel Jorge, who is also Brazil´s minister for development, industry and foreign trade, comments on what he calls a Brazilian success story.

by John Fitzpatrick

Oil has seldom been far from the headlines in Brazil since the state-owned petroleum giant, Petrobras, announced at the end of last year that it had discovered large new offshore reserves of oil and gas. Should these reserves be recoverable then Brazil is set to become not only an oil exporter but one of the world´s biggest producers. The news was hailed by investors and share prices in Petrobras rose sharply. However, a comment by the head of the National Petroleum Agency (ANP), Haroldo Lima, on April 14 suggesting that there were further deposits of oil which could be five times greater raised the stakes even higher and pushed up the share price of Petrobras and other associated companies not only in Brazil but all over the world. You might think this would be good news for Brazil but it was not, since Lima not only jumped the gun but may have given inaccurate information and, at the same time, he completely mishandled the way major news involving publicly-traded companies should be communicated.