MacroScope

2012 has been a year to forget for Brazil’s struggling industry – just like the year before. But a weekly central bank survey of around 90 financial institutions says that will all change next year and industry will grow at healthy 4 percent pace.

Will it?  One year ago, the same survey predicted 4.1 percent growth for 2012. Despite massive stimulus by President Dilma Rousseff’s government, including record-low interest rates and billions of dollars in tax cuts that were off everyone’s radar, industrial output in Latin America’s largest economy is set to fall by 2.3 percent.

The same pattern happened the year before. Two months before the start of 2011, analysts expected an expansion of 5.3 percent in Brazil’s industrial output but in the end it grew by only 0.3 percent.

Have economists been overoptimistic?

Luciano Rostagno, chief strategist at WestLB in Sao Paulo, said his 2013 forecasts consider a gradual recovery of the global economy and the effects of all the stimulus provided by Brazilian authorities. His estimate for industrial output is even more positive: 5 percent growth.

But the risks are clear, he admitted.

If global economic growth remains sluggish, Brazilian entrepreneurs may postpone their investment plans even further, despite all the stimulus offered by the government.

An obscure gauge of shipping costs rose to prominence in geeky macro circles during the financial crisis because its plunge provided a telling lead on the economic crash that unfolded in 2008 and 2009. Now, the Baltic Dry Index has again taken a nosedive, falling to its lowest level in more than two decades.

This time, analysts are explaining it away as a reflection of an increased number of carriers at sea.

Julian Jessop at Capital Economics, acknowledges this has indeed been a big factor behind the index’s decline. Still, he suggests the magnitude of the drop should give forecasters some pause.

Phew. Industrial production rose 0.9% in July, the fastest in seven months. For the moment, that appeared to forestall fears that another U.S. recession  might be imminent, even if stocks were down on worries about weak economic growth in Germany. Harm Bandholz at Unicredit saw the figures as a bright spot:

Today’s report, in combination with the recent improvements in initial jobless claims and retail sales, corroborates our view that GDP growth in the second half of the year is likely to accelerate to (a still low) 2%-2¼% from less than 1% in the first half.

Economists at Credit Suisse were less sanguine:

The July industrial production performance is not consistent with recession.  But industrial production tells us where we are, not where we are going.