• The Focus Bulletin, which gathers the forecasts of a selection of banks and institutions for the Brazilian economy, indicates a decrease of 5.1% for the country’s GDP this year;
• But some institutions already foresee a worse scenario.

Just over two months after the first death by COVID-19 in Brazil (March 17th), the country surpassed the 1,000 deaths in a day for the first time on Tuesday and now accounts for one in seven of the new cases in the world, according to O Estado de S.Paulo. With the escalation of the new coronavirus comes a new wave of pessimistic forecasts for the country’s economy for this year, as reported by Valor Econômico.

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The Focus Bulletin, which gathers the forecasts of a selection of banks and institutions for the Brazilian economy, indicates a decrease of 5.1% for the country’s GDP this year. But some institutions already foresee a worse scenario.

This is the case of Goldman Sachs, which changed its projection of decline for the GDP from 4.6% to 7.4%, of Santander, which now works with a 6.4% decrease scenario, and of Barclays, which sees a retraction of around 5.7% in the Brazilian economy this year.

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Institutions are also more pessimistic about the recovery of the economy in general. Goldman Sachs believes that it will only come from 2023 in Brazil. Santander is more optimistic, and see a 4.4% GDP growth in 2021–the bank believes that the ease of the social isolation measures will come in June.

A vision probably stimulated by the departure of two ministers of Health in the midst of the pandemic and by the insistence of President Jair Bolsonaro on controversial points, such as the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19, even without scientific evidence, and the end of isolation.

The president also defends a “vertical isolation”, which in practice does not exist, but which would be focused on isolating only people from risk groups, although research has already shown that approximately 85% of people who get the new coronavirus show no symptoms and pass it on without realizing it.