Brazil Property

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil must increase military spending to meet new challenges including the defense of a huge offshore oil discovery and Amazon resources, the minister for strategic affairs said on Wednesday.

The government is close to finishing a plan that would shift military priorities away from its southern borders and toward its long Atlantic coast, its air space and a porous border in the Amazon region.

The strategic defense plan will guide the purchase of military equipment in coming years.

"Brazil currently spends 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. That amount will have to rise," Minister Roberto Mangabeira Unger told reporters after an environment seminar in Brasilia.

The government could increase military spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product, Valor newspaper reported on Monday.

The Associated Press
Published: September 11, 2008

Booming agribusiness and industry helped Brazil's economy grow by 6.1 percent in the second quarter of 2008, the government said Wednesday, exceeding analysts' expectations. Just hours later, the Central Bank hiked Brazil's benchmark interest rate.

The increase in gross domestic product, announced by Brazil's statistics bureau, surpassed the 5.2 percent growth rate forecast by analysts cited by G1, the Web site of Brazil's Globo TV.

The gains put Brazil on track to grow 5 percent to 5.5 percent in 2008, Finance Minster Guido Mantega said, following 5.4 percent growth last year.

The result was likely partly responsible for central bankers' decision to boost Brazil's Selic interest rate 0.75 percentage points to 13.75 percent Wednesday night in a bid to control 6.3 percent annual inflation in Latin America's largest economy.

As growth in the United States and Europe slowed in the second quarter, Brazil's robust agribusiness sector expanded 7.1 percent over the year-ago period, even though big gains by the nation's currency against the U.S. dollar made Brazilian exports more expensive abroad. Brazil is the world's top exporter of sugar, beef, chicken and orange juice, and second only to the United States for soy.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Wednesday announced a 350-million-real (196.6million U.S. dollar) project for getting better cartographic knowledge of the Amazon.

The president made the announcement at the Fourth International Fair of the Amazon, an exhibition promoting the products and technologies in the region in the Amazon city of Manaos.

The so-called Cartographic Project of the Amazon intends to update the terrestrial, geological and nautical maps of the Amazon region. The final result forecast for 2012 will be a continuous digital cartographic base of the Amazon.

The initiative will increase the knowledge of the Amazon and will offer useful information for regional security and defense, as well as for development projects such as highways, railways, hydroelectric plants, mining and agricultural activities, and settlement of landless peasants.