VENTURE CAPITAL POST

The commodities-fuelled boom has transformed many millions of Brazilian poor people into 'the new middle class' and the ongoing recession is again eroding their spending and earning capacity. Middle-class people in Brazil find it difficult to sustain their living standards amid intensifying economy recession and soaring inflation rate. Many owners of small shops, coffee stalls and other small vendors see their dwindling earnings by more than half during the past three years. As a result, many middle-class people are slashing their spending levels, which result in a cascading impact on other segments.

By picking a banker instead of an oil executive to run Petrobras, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff appears to have recognized that the state-run company's biggest priority is to clean up its books and acknowledge how many billions of dollars it lost to a corruption scheme in recent years.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff urged her cabinet on Tuesday to embrace fiscal belt-tightening and other measures aimed at restoring business confidence and growth in her second term.

Brazil's efforts to bring down its debt will translate into renewed investor confidence and additional room to continue poverty-reduction policies for the years to come, incoming Finance Minister Joaquim Levy said on Saturday.