The US dollar fell to BRL 5.43 on Monday (30), its lowest level since September 2024 in Brazil. The drop was accompanied by a rise of almost 1.5% in the Ibovespa, the Brazilian stock exchange’s most important index, which accumulated an appreciation of 15% in the first half of the year. For economist Matheus Peçanha, from the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s Brazilian Institute of Economics (Ibre/FGV), it is positive for the Brazilian economy, but doesn’t represent a stable trend yet.
“It’s a surprising movement that has been going on since December of last year […] and this has very positive consequences because we have a lot of dollarized costs,” he said in an interview with Rádio Brasil de Fato’s Conexão BdF show. According to Peçanha, the dollar price drop makes imported products cheaper and can have an impact on people’s daily lives. “Even if you don’t buy dollars or travel frequently, it affects you a lot – for example, the price of bread – because we have to buy wheat from abroad, paying in dollars,” he explains.
Despite this, he points out that the international scenario remains unstable, with ongoing wars and uncertainty about the direction of US monetary policy. “We still have a very risky balance. The risk is still very high in all markets, but we see this exchange rate resisting and falling now, despite all the current global risk balance,” he says.
The economist recalls that the dollar surpassed BRL 6.30 in 2023, driven by geopolitical crises and rising interest rates in the US, which attracted investors to Brazil and increased demand for the Brazilian currency. Today, with central banks in both Brazil and the US being cautious and keeping interest rates stable, the market has cooled down.
However, Peçanha highlights that “this is no guarantee of long-term stability, whatsoever”. “At any moment, if the Central Bank here or there, in particular, decides that now is the time to raise interest rates again, the exchange rate will go up. We are still in a very risky, difficult, slippery scenario for any decision to be made in this regard,” he says.
