LatinNews Daily - 22 June 2023

* Brazil’s central bank (BCB)’s monetary policy committee (Copom) has voted to maintain the benchmark interest rate at 13.75% for a seventh consecutive policy meeting. The meeting minutes released by Copom did not indicate when the interest rate might be lowered, despite a slowing of inflation, with an accumulated annual inflation rate of 3.94% registered for May, down from 4.18% in April. Instead, the committee stressed the need for caution, warning that the annual inflation rate may still increase in the second half of this year. According to the BCB’s figures, the deflationary process has not reached the levels required to meet the bank’s annual inflation target of 3.25% +/-1.5. In the bank’s latest Focus bulletin, a weekly survey of economists and analysts, the forecast for 2023’s annual inflation stood at 5.12%. Among the economic worries cited by Copom, the implementation of the government’s proposed fiscal framework bill has also caused concern, as the BCB remains unclear about the final contents of the new legislation, the main text of which has been approved by the senate but has been sent back to the lower house to review some amendments.