Subscribe to this Feed by Email
(Repeating story from late Sunday with no changes to text)
BRASILIA Oct 31 (Reuters) - Dilma Rousseff of the ruling Workers' Party won Brazil's presidential election on Sunday by a wide margin over opposition rival Jose Serra, and will become the first woman to lead Latin America's largest country.
Rousseff, a former chief of staff under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, won a strong mandate with about 56 percent of valid votes. Her campaign had benefited from a booming economy and Lula's huge popularity.
Rousseff, 62, endorses the pillars of economic policy that have made Brazil one of the world's hottest emerging markets. Here are some of her positions on key issues:
ECONOMIC STABILITY
Rousseff would maintain the mostly market-friendly policies that have provided economic stability over the past decade: a free-floating currency, inflation control and fiscal discipline.
FISCAL DISCIPLINE
The career civil servant whose party has strong ties to public sector unions, Rousseff proposes maintaining fiscal discipline with gradual adjustments but has ruled out the kind of drastic austerity measures that marked the first year of Lula's administration in 2003. She has said Brazil does not need to rein in public spending for the economy to keep growing at a robust pace.
She has pledged to keep a primary budget surplus target of 3.3 percent of gross domestic product until net debt falls to 30 percent of GDP in late 2014. It was 41 percent of GDP in September.
The government still expects to hit its primary budget target in 2010, after a large one-off payment by state oil company Petrobras helped it partially offset a ramp-up in public spending this year. Still, it may only meet its target by excluding spending on its infrastructure program or adopting other unusual accounting methods.
STATE ROLE IN ECONOMY
Rousseff favors a strong state role in strategic areas, such as banking, petroleum and energy, but she insists private companies in those sectors would not be crowded out.
She also pledges to promote government efficiency and a meritocracy while cutting red tape.
A former energy and mining minister under Lula, Rousseff may also increase state intervention in the mining sector, which could create risks for iron-ore giant Vale. Lula's government has put pressure on the world's biggest iron-ore producer to create more jobs in Brazil by investing in steel production.
Rousseff is likely to push on with efforts to boost access to broadband Internet services among low-income households through the revived state-run Telebras, whose assets had been privatized in the 1990s. Some industry leaders have said the private sector could be harmed by the plan.
*We welcome comments that advance the story directly or with relevant tangential information. We try to block comments that use offensive language or appear to be spam and review comments frequently to ensure they meet our standards. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters.View the original article here
0 comments:
Post a Comment