By Gabriel Burin
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Brazil’s real currency is expected to trade relatively steady in coming months, restrained by concerns over a deterioration in the country’s external accounts, a Reuters poll showed.
The real is approaching the mid-year mark in better shape than expected at the start of 2025, with support from higher local interest rates and a weaker U.S. dollar globally.
But investor doubts over the ability of Latin America’s largest economy to keep funding its current account gap have added recently to concerns about the fiscal deficit and how to fix it.
In 12 months, the local currency is forecast to change hands near its value on Tuesday of 5.64 per dollar, losing only 1.9% to 5.75, according to the median estimate of 27 foreign exchange analysts polled May 30 to June 3.
The latest consensus projection for the end of June at 5.70 per dollar is 4.7% stronger than the 5.97 rate forecast in a January poll, when the currency was still recovering from a bad spell at the end of 2024.
Itau Unibanco analysts cited Brazil’s favorable interest rate spread and hopes of progress in trade talks between the United States and China as factors underpinning the real.
“However, a (potential) trade agreement between the U.S. and other countries increases the chance of keeping the so-called American exceptionalism in place”, the bank’s economists added.
“This, combined with domestic fiscal uncertainties and unfavorable external accounts dynamics, limits more positive scenarios for the currency.”
Challenges for Brazil’s exporters include a decrease in poultry shipments broadly due to an avian influenza outbreak as well as lower Chinese soybean imports.
Of 16 respondents to an extra question on risks to estimates for the real in the coming year, six tilted towards a stronger currency, five expected it to weaken and another five expressed neutral views.
For the Mexican peso, five of 12 respondents expected it to strengthen, four saw risks of weakening, and three were neutral.
According to the poll, the peso is set to depreciate 6% in 12 months to 20.46 per U.S. dollar from 19.23 on Tuesday.
In Argentina, the peso is expected to trade at 1,440 per dollar in 12 months, just below the expected upper limit of its official adjustable trading band, set in April at 1,400 plus a 1% monthly increase.
So far this year, the real has gained 9.6%, the Mexican peso is up 8.3% and Argentina’s currency has lost 13% – much less than some feared after the country loosened its capital controls.
(Other stories from the June Reuters foreign exchange poll)
(Reporting and polling by Gabriel Burin in Buenos Aires; additional polling by Anant Chandak, Renusri K and Rahul Trivedi in Bengaluru; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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