*Brazil’s finance minister, Fernando Haddad, has confirmed that the government would freeze R$15bn (US$2.7bn) of the 2024 budget. The freeze was expected to be announced next week but Haddad said that the announcement was brought forward to avoid speculation. Market confidence regarding fiscal discipline was rattled earlier this week, when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gave an interview to a local TV station, TV Record, on 16 July in which he said that, while the government is doing as much as it can to meet its zero-deficit fiscal target this year, it would not be a problem if there was a slight deficit of 0.1% or 0.2%, as long as the economy, employment, and wages are growing.