In brief: Brazil’s Lula meets central bank chief to ease tensions

* Brazil’s finance minister, Fernando Haddad, has said at a press conference that he attended the first in-person meeting between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the central bank (BCB)’s president Roberto Campos Neto in the Planalto presidential palace. Since taking office in January, the Lula administration has repeatedly criticised the BCB’s hawkish monetary policy stance. The BCB’s monetary policy committee (Copom) has decided to lower the benchmark interest rate (Selic) in its past two meetings – last week cutting the Selic from 13.25% to 12.75% – but Copom’s latest meeting minutes (published on 26 September) indicated that it would not intensify its rate cuts in the next meetings. The state news agency Agência Brasil cited Haddad as saying that Lula told Campos Neto that he would respect the BCB’s autonomy. The national daily Folha de São Paulo reported that Haddad, Lula, and Campos Neto did not make decisions on “specific topics” in their meeting but have agreed that Lula and the central bank chief would continue to hold “periodic conversations” to promote dialogue and ease the tensions between the institutions.

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