*Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has heavily criticised the president of the central bank (BCB), Roberto Campos. In an interview with local radio station CBN, Lula said that “we only have one thing going wrong in Brazil at the moment, which is the behaviour of the central bank”, and accused Campos of “not showing any capacity to act autonomously, having a political angle, and… working much harder to harm the country than to help it”. Lula said that Campos has not been able to explain the decision to maintain high interest rates. In the BCB’s most recent monetary policy meeting, held in May, the bank slowed the pace of interest rate cuts by lowering the benchmark rate to 10.50% - a reduction of 0.25 basis points, after previous cuts of 0.5 basis points. Lula said that the high rate is dampening a climate of economic optimism in Brazil, asking: “How are you going to convince a businessperson to invest if they have to pay an absurd interest rate?”
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