BRASILIA: Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega on Thursday acknowledged economic growth could miss initial projections next year if Europe's debt crisis takes a turn for the worse, and said additional policy measures are under analysis to revive the nation's manufacturing sector.
Growth could be 4.0 percent next year if countries in the euro region fail to agree on a solution to their fiscal problems, Mantega said in Brasilia. President Dilma Rousseff and Mantega have repeatedly said that economic growth could come between 4.5 percent and 5 percent in 2012.
Mantega said those potential measures to aid manufacturers could be "related to trade defense," without elaborating. He expects Brazil's economy to grow between 3 percent and 3.5 percent this year.
"If Europe finds a way out of this crisis, we could grow some 5.0 percent next year," the minister told reporters at a ministry event.
His remarks signal that the government is confident recent stimuli in the form of tax breaks and subsidies to industrial companies will revert a recession in the segment.
Economists polled by the central bank expect the country to expand less than the 3.0 percent government estimate for this year.
The yield on the Jan. 2013 interest rate future contact jumped 13 basis points to 9.96 percent on Thursday, mainly after the unemployment rate hit a fresh record-low in November.
Investors use the rate future contracts as a way of foprecasting trends on the central bank's Selic overnight rate. Strong economic readings, like low unemployment, usually lead traders to bet that the central bank will not need to trim rates too much or for too long to kickstart economic growth.
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