BRASIL­IA: Brazil­ian Pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff an­nounced sweep­ing cuts to elec­tric­i­ty rates on Thurs­day in a new ef­fort to low­er some of the world's high­est busi­ness costs that are sti­fling a once-boom­ing emerg­ing-mar­kets star. In a wide­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed an­nounce­ment, Rouss­eff said that cuts could drop in­dus­tri­al elec­tric­i­ty rates by as much as 28 per cent, while res­i­den­tial con­sumers would see rates fall on av­er­age by 16.2 per cent.

With growth in the world's sixth-largest econ­o­my stalled for near­ly a year now, Rouss­eff's mea­sures will bring need­ed re­lief to lo­cal in­dus­tries that are los­ing mar­ket share to for­eign com­peti­tors that have low­er costs. "This re­duc­tion in the cost of the elec­tric­i­ty will make our pro­duc­tive sec­tor even more com­pet­i­tive," Rouss­eff said in a tele­vised ad­dress to the na­tion ahead of the coun­try's in­de­pen­dence day on Sep­tem­ber 7. She said cuts will take ef­fect in ear­ly 2013, but did not de­tail how the gov­ern­ment plans to car­ry them out. Of­fi­cials have said her ad­min­is­tra­tion plans to re­duce fed­er­al tax­es on elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­nies.

Reuters