BRAZIL: Primary Result In August Leads Deficit To Worst Level Ever Recorded

(RTTNews) - The Brazilian government had a primary deficit of R$ 9.529 billion (US$ 2.99 billion) in August, leading the result year-to-date to the worst level ever recorded, despite receding both on a monthly and yearly basis.

A year before, the primary deficit was at R$ 22.267 billion, while in July 2017 there was a R$ 16.138 billion deficit.

The result is the worst ever recorded for the eight-month period from January until August - a R$ 60.85 billion (US$ 19.1 billion) primary deficit, equivalent to 1.41% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 3.4% higher than the R$ 58.859 billion (1.43% of GDP) negative result from the same period of 2016.

In 12 months through August, the primary deficit amounted to R$ 157.782 billion, or 2.44% of GDP, from 2.66% in the 12 months ended in July. The nominal deficit was at R$ 331.928 billion in the same period, or 7,67% of GDP, from 9.35% of the GDP in the previous month.

The net debt of the public sector totaled R$ 3.245 trillion at the end of August, or 50.2% of the GDP, up 0.5 percentage point (pp) from July.