Brazil has cut its growth fore­cast for this year as the glob­al down­turn hits ex­ports and ris­ing lo­cal debt lev­els weigh on con­sump­tion. The coun­try will grow two per cent this year, down from its pre­vi­ous fore­cast of three per cent, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Gui­do Man­te­ga pre­dict­ed. That would be the weak­est an­nu­al per­for­mance since 2009 and a sharp slow­down from growth of 7.5 per cent in 2010. Brazil be­came the world's sixth-largest econ­o­my this year, over­tak­ing the Unit­ed King­dom.

The Latin Amer­i­can na­tion's econ­o­my grew 2.7 per cent last year, of­fi­cial fig­ures showed. Pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff re­cent­ly launched the first in a se­ries of mea­sures that could in­ject up to US$50 bil­lion in­to the econ­o­my over the next five years. The plan in­clud­ed pri­vatis­ing about 14,000 kilo­me­tres of rail­ways and roads, fol­lowed by sell­ing ports and low­er­ing en­er­gy costs.

BBC