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Strategies & Market Trends : Telebras (TBH) & Brazil -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (1072)	2/21/1998 1:34:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 22640

FOCUS-Amid concerns, Sao Paulo delays Elektro sale By Fatima Cristina RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Sao Paulo state, faced with growing complaints and pressure from stock authorities, delayed Friday its planned March 18 sale of power firm Cesp's (CES_p.SA) distribution spinoff Elektro. biz.yahoo.com

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (1072)	2/21/1998 1:40:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 22640

Brazil mkts closed 1st half next week for Carnival Reuters, Friday, February 20, 1998 at 07:39 SAO PAULO, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Brazilian financial markets will be closed Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday for the country's annual pre-Lenten Carnival celebrations, bolsa officials said. The Sao Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa), Latin America's largest bourse, will open two hours later than normal on Ash Wednesday, beginning at 1300 local/1500 GMT/1000 EST and running to 1700 local/1900 GMT/1400 EST. Currency and money markets were also set to resume trading at noon Wednesday. Currency markets will close at a regularly scheduled 1630 local/1930 GMT/1330 EST and money markets will close at 1730 local/2030 GMT/1430 EST. Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (1072)	2/21/1998 1:44:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 22640

Brazil posts puzzling 1997 deficit jump -- report BRASILIA, Feb 20 (Reuters) - A Brazilian newspaper reported Friday that Brazil's consolidated public sector deficit may have jumped unexpectedly in December but also suggested some mistake had been made in drawing up the numbers. biz.yahoo.com

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (1072)	2/21/1998 1:47:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 22640

Brazil Fin Min official confirms deficit report Reuters, Friday, February 20, 1998 at 17:54 BRASILIA, Feb 20 (Reuters) - A Brazilian Finance Ministry official confirmed a newspaper report that the country's consolidated public sector deficit widened unexpectedly in December, sharply raising the gap for 1997 as a whole. The official, who asked not to be named, said the deficit in nominal terms ended the year at an equivalent of 6.0 percent of gross domestic product. Market expectations had been for a nominal deficit close to 5.0 percent of GDP. The official also confirmed a deficit in primary terms -- which excludes debt costs -- of about 0.5 percent of GDP. The government's original target for 1997 was for a primary surplus of 1.5 percent of GDP. In operational terms -- including inflation-adjusted debt costs -- the deficit was approximately 3.8 percent of GDP, the official said. Brazil's Central Bank had been due to announce the figures officially Friday, but postponed their release until next Thursday, after Carnival celebrations. "They transferred the announcement from today because it would have been dangerous on the eve of a public holiday," said the Finance Ministry official. A spokesman for the Central Bank said officials had decided to put back the announcement of the figures until next week because of "an overload of work." "The Central Bank will not comment on this report for the time being," the spokesman said. "The numbers are being drawn up and it is therefore not the right time to comment on them." Financial daily Gazeta Mercantil Friday quoted a government official as saying he believed the numbers might be a mistake. "These numbers are very strange and cast doubt on the Central Bank's methods of calculation," the official told the newspaper. The official told Gazeta that the poor figures in the report were caused by a one percentage point slip in the budget performance of state and municipal governments from November to December. william.schomberg@reuters.com)) Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (1072)	2/21/1998 1:50:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 22640

FOCUS - Confusion over Brazil's fiscal health Reuters, Friday, February 20, 1998 at 18:30 By John Miller SAO PAULO, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Reports Friday that Brazil's closely watched budget deficit deteriorated sharply in the final month of 1997 puzzled economists and raised a huge question on the nation's fiscal health ahead of a long Carnival weekend. While government officials off the record confirmed news reports of worsening budget numbers, some questioned the reliability of the figures and said they needed another week to sort it all out. "The Central Bank will not comment on this report for the time being," a bank spokesman said. "The numbers are being drawn up and it is therefore not the right time to comment on them." He said the bank, which was to release budget figures Friday, would discuss them on February 26, when the nation returns from the five-day Carnival celebration. A Finance Ministry official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said Friday that the budget deficit in nominal terms ended the year at the equivalent of 6.0 percent of gross domestic product. The worsening was attributed to spending by municipal and state governments in the month of December. The market expected a 1997 figure closer to 5.0 percent of GDP, about where it stood in the 12-month period to November. "They transferred the announcement from today because it would have been dangerous on the eve of a public holiday," the official said. Brazil's nominal budget deficit, which covers local, state and federal spending, including interest payments, fell from 7.2 percent of GDP in 1995 to 5.9 percent in 1996 and was expected to continue falling in 1997. Global investors have kept a wary eye on Brazil's fiscal improvement and have been assured by Brasilia that the progress will continue. Economists say improvement is essential because the nation's wide current account and budget deficits make its currency vulnerable to speculative attacks. They say the budget gap must continue to shrink to deter speculators. Brazil assets on local and international markets were mostly unaffected by the report. Late last year, Brazil doubled annual interest rates and introduced an $18 billion budget savings package to plug dollar outflows during the height of the Asian crisis. The move reassured world markets that Brazil's fiscal commitments were serious. The Finance Ministry official also said Brazil's primary accounts, which unlike the nominal deficit do not include interest payments, closed 1997 with a 0.5 percent deficit. The primary account was expected to end the year in balance or with a slight surplus. While economists described the numbers as "shocking" and "unbelievable," they said it was too early to completely discard them. "You can not discard them because they are not totally out of the range of possibility. But if they were true, it would indeed be surprising," said an economist at a leading international bank in Brazil. If true, the figures point to a whopping 1.0 percentage point deterioration in the budget deficit in December. The largest official deterioration in a single month in 1997 was 0.5 percent in June, economists said. Some economists, like BMC Bank's Marcelo Allain, said the numbers did not appear very reliable. "This seems like an unreliable (nominal budget) number because the last figure we got from the Central Bank was 5.03 percent of GDP in the 12 months to November. It seems impossible for it to have jumped this much in one month," Allain said. A government official quoted by financial daily Gazeta Mercantil agreed. "These numbers are very strange and cast doubt on the Central Bank's methods of calculation," the official told the newspaper. john.miller@reuters.com)) Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service