The news back in 2014 of a group of investors launching a project to build Brazil’s first ethanol plant based 100% on corn raised eyebrows in a country that had invented a national ethanol program entirely based on sugarcane. Analysts thought the plan carried risks associated with an unstable market for the fuel and uncertainty regarding corn supplies and prices, beyond the fact that there was a general assumption that it was more expensive to produce ethanol from corn than from sugarcane. Five years on, the group has doubled capacity in the initial plant, built a second unit and announced plans for three more, as Brazilian farmers ramp up corn production. Two other companies are building 100% corn-based ethanol plants in Brazil, and others are revamping existing mills to run on corn as well in the cane’s between-harvests periods, the so-called flex ethanol plants.

May 21, 2019 - Folha de S. Paulo

Brazil is in the midst of the slowest economic recovery in its history. If Brazil's GDP (gross domestic product) fails to grow to this year, stagnating for the third year in a row, then the country will have entered a depression. This is the view of Alfonso Celso Pastore, ex-president of Banco Centro, who launched last Friday (18) the report "The depression after the recession."

May 21, 2019 - Deutsche Welle

Brazil loses credibility under Jair Bolsonaro. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has found himself to be persona non grata in New York. And Brazil may encounter similar hostility elsewhere in the world as well while he remains leader. What was meant to have been a glitzy New York ceremony that saw Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro awarded a "Person of the Year" prize ended up provoking a heated and prolonged bout of political mudslinging. The Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce intended to honor Bolsonaro, along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, at a gala held in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

May 21, 2019 - Bloomberg

Another week, another leg of the emerging-market rout. Stocks were on course for their worst month since October, while currencies suffered their biggest weekly loss in a year, erasing gains for the year. Brazil’s real led the drop as protests added to political tensions and growth forecasts declined. “There are no deadlines” for pressure on risky assets to ease, said Alejandro Cuadrado, a senior strategist at BBVA in New York. “Emerging currencies are starting to be quite cheap, but demand will be limited with uncertainty and the fact that even when we were pricing more benign scenarios, they didn’t perform.” Cuadrado says that the Brazilian real could do worse in the near term