Brasília, June 23, 2004 (Agência Brasil) - The current transactions account in last month's balance of payments registered a record surplus of US$ 1.478 billion, raising this year's cumulative surplus between January and May to US$ 2.426 billion and the chances of fulfilling this year's annual surplus target of US$ 2.5 billion, as projected in a revised forecast by the Brazilian Central Bank (BC).

These figures were announced today by the head of the BC's Economic Department, Altamir Lopes, who added that "the good result was based," to a great extent, on the US$ 3.118 billion trade surplus. He optimistically asserted that this month's performance will be even better, and he predicted a current transactions surplus of around US$ 1.8 billion.

According to Lopes, the BC raised its expectations for this year's trade surplus to US$ 26 billion, up from last month's estimate of US$ 24 billion. Still, the BC's forecast is less optimistic than the one made by the market, since financial analysts and the Ministry of Development, Industry, and Foreign Trade are going on the assumption of US$ 27 billion.

He admitted that the BC's projections "tend to be more conservative." Nevertheless, he expressed optimism over the inflow of foreign direct investments into the country, although the bank has lowered its forecast from US$ 13 billion to US$ 12 billion for the year. This figure surpasses the US$ 10.6 billion average of market estimates.

Lopes said that direct investments in May totaled only US$ 207 million, the smallest surplus since June, 2003, when the surplus came to US$ 183 million. But he pointed out that the cumulative surplus for the five months between January and May, US$ 3.307 billion, remained on the same level as last year's US$ 3.315 billion surplus for the same period.

The BC economist observed that the flow of outside resources into the country has already begun to reverse the downward trend, and he believes that "the flow of resources will return to normal in the second half of the year."

Reporter: Stenio Ribeiro
Translator: David Silberstein