São Paulo, April 11, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The Central Bank's Director of Economic Policy, Ilan Goldfajn, said yesterday (10) that there is no way to anticipate the future decisions of the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom), but he admitted that it is possible, over the medium term, that room appears for a reduction in interest rates.

According to Goldfajn, March's IPCA (Broad Consumer Price Index) of 1.23% was higher than expected, but he believes that this result was influenced by prices that reflected the dollar's previous higher value. He added that the tendency is for the value of the American currency to fall, but the decline should not be expected to be linear. The Central Bank director took part in the seminar "Perspectives for the Brazilian Economy, 2003," organized by the Tendências consulting firm. (DAS)