* Brazil’s central bank (BCB) has released the latest edition of its Focus bulletin, a weekly survey of private sector economists and analysts, which predicted that the country’s annual GDP for 2023 would grow by 2.14% compared to the previous year. This is the first time this year that experts have forecast that annual GDP would grow by more than 2%. The bulletin from one week earlier, published on 12 June, forecast 1.84% growth for 2023, while the bulletin from one month earlier predicted only 1.2%. However, the bulletin forecasts that annual GDP growth will slow in 2024 and 2025, to 1.2% and 1.8% respectively.