😊😩 Good news/bad news on January inflation

Brazil’s latest inflation data. A higher perception of corruption in the country. And Petrobras’s move into AI

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Gustavo Ribeiro & Letícia Arcoverde
February 11, 2025 • Reading Time: 2 minutes

Good morning! Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 decree to pause all instances of foreign aid from the US has had far-reaching consequences, not least the suspension of a US-Brazil partnership to train Brazilian firefighters to combat forest fires — the instances of which went through the roof in the Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal last year.

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Inflation takes the good with the bad

Airfares soared by double digits in January 2025. Photo: Joá Souza/Shutterstock

Airfares soared by double digits in January 2025. Photo: Joá Souza/Shutterstock

Brazil’s main inflation gauge, the IPCA index, slowed in January, rising 4.56% over the past 12 months, down from 4.83% in December.

The good. A key factor behind the slowdown was a sharp drop in household energy prices, which fell 14.2% last month. The reduction was driven by the so-called “Itaipu bonus,” a government initiative that redirects surplus revenue from the Itaipu Dam to consumers in the form of discounts on their electricity bills.

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