SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s government needs to worry less about its high approval ratings and focus instead on reforms that, while unpopular, could bring the country out of its recent rut of subpar growth, former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said yesterday.
America Investment Summit, Cardoso blamed politicians’ “excessive confidence” in the status quo for economic growth that averaged just 1.8 percent over the last two years, a period that saw Brazil fall out of favour as a hot spot for foreign capital.
Cardoso, who was president from 1995 to 2002 and remains an influential voice in the opposition PSDB party at the age of 81, said labour and tax reforms could get Latin America’s biggest economy back on track but that President Dilma Rousseff has not shown the courage or skill needed to push them through Congress.
“Brazil didn’t continue on the road of reform,” Cardoso said. “There was a kind of excessive confidence that the impetus given by (financial) stability and by the world … were sufficient to ensure well-being forever.”
Rousseff, a pragmatic leftist, is one of the world’s most popular leaders with an approval rating near 80 per cent thanks largely to unemployment that has stayed at record lows despite the anemic economic growth.
She is a strong favourite to win re-election next year over candidates including the PSDB’s Aecio Neves, a senator from Minas Gerais state who has Cardoso’s strong backing.
