LatinNews Daily - 14 January 2025

*Brazil’s central bank (BCB) has released the latest edition of its Focus bulletin, a weekly survey containing the economic projections of private sector analysts, which shows an annual inflation forecast of 5.0% for 2025 and 4.05% for 2026. The market analysts’ inflation projections from one month earlier were 4.6% for this year and 4.0% for next year. The private sector’s outlook appears to be more pessimistic than that of the BCB, which has projected annual inflation to close this year at 4.5%, around the upper limit of Brazil’s new continuous inflation target of 3.0% +/-1.5. This Focus bulletin is the first edition published since the national statistics institute (Ibge) released the official 2024 annual inflation figure on 10 January, which came to 4.83%. The edition published on 6 January showed a higher forecast than the eventual figure, projecting 4.89% for 2024.