Following the ousting of the CEO of Brazil’s state-controlled oil group Petrobras by President Bolsonaro earlier this week, experts fear what greater intervention might do to the country’s oil industry. The removal of CEO, Roberto Castello Blanco, from his position at the head of Petrobras came following a conflict with the President over energy price hikes. Fears that price increases in diesel would cause protests led Bolsonaro to oppose a Petrobras price hike under Castello Blanco. However, the outspoken ex-CEO is hitting back, warning that a policy of state intervention could put artificial limits on the price of fuel. Castello Blanco explained, “If you want to have a market economy, you have to have a market price. Prices below have many consequences, some predictable and others unpredictable, but all negative.”

Mar 01, 2021 - Bloomberg

Bloomberg has ranked the best and worst countries to be in this "coronavirus era." One year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Brazil is placed 50th on the list, with 53 countries in the ranking. The top five are New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Finland, and Norway. China, where the pandemic broke out, ranks 6th, followed by Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Thailand. Among the Latin countries mapped, those doing better than Brazil are Chile, in 39th position; Argentina in 42nd and Colombia in 43rd.

Mar 01, 2021 - Financial Times

After Brazil was rocked by market turmoil last week, President Jair Bolsonaro sought to soothe tensions not with international investors or political opponents, but with his own finance minister. “Paulo Guedes is an anchor of our government,” Bolsonaro said. Previously at a public event he had offered up similar praise to the minister, who sat inscrutable in the audience with his emotions hidden behind a Covid-19 mask. Bolsonaro’s shock move a week ago to replace the chief executive of state-controlled Petrobras following disagreements over fuel prices has been widely viewed in Brazil as a snub to Guedes, a free-market economist who has long decried government interventions in business.

Mar 01, 2021 - The Economist

The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, likes to call his University of Chicago-educated economy minister, Paulo Guedes, his “Posto Ipiranga,” a chain of full-service petrol stations. The nickname charmed markets during the election campaign in 2018, but Mr Guedes’s reform agenda has lost ground to populist moves aimed at winning re-election. When on February 19th Mr Bolsonaro fired Roberto Castello Branco, the boss of Petrobras, to appease lorry drivers upset about rising fuel prices, markets saw it as a sign of more meddling to come. What is unusual is not that Mr Bolsonaro intervened, but how he did so. With the oil price rising, the real falling and an election approaching in 2022, “no government could resist the populist temptation,” says a former executive of Petrobras, which has had 16 bosses in 30 years.