While the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is a necessary step towards saving the Brazilian political democracy, its social fabric has been severely weakened by the far right. It will take years to begin rebuilding a decent and inclusive society, where all Brazilians, including minorities and the marginalised, feel safe and can thrive.
Brazil’s reservation policy recognises the state’s moral responsibility to the black and mixed-race community for years of suffering and racial discrimination. Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government wants to undo this.
The BRICS summit held in October 2016 suggested the possible use of local currency in intra-BRICS trade to lower costs. This article extends this idea and proposes a scheme for setting up a clearing account in local currencies of the BRICS countries. It contends that such a step will provide avenues for generating additional demand within the region while cushioning the member countries against shocks from exchange rate volatility.
The elections in the Federal Republic of Germany that witnessed the victory of social democracy and the Greens and in Brazil where a Workers' Party registered a landslide victory are significant in many ways. Most importantly, they have both set in motion a polarisation of class forces having in their own different way. Brazil has repudiated the Free Trade of Americas and unequivocally condemned US policy on Iraq, as has Germany.
South Africa and Brazil have both successfully adopted provisions in their respective patents legislations that indicate that there is scope for flexibility in TRIPs implementation. India too needs to redraft its Patents (Second Amendment) Bill in a way that takes into account more fully the needs of the people, especially their right to health and access to drugs.
Brazil, the world’s largest coffee grower, has announced that it will soon abandon the retention plan launched by the Association of Coffee Producing Countries (ACPC) in May last year. Under the plan, which was to run for two years to help boost sagging coffee prices in the world market, producing countries were to withhold 20 per cent of their exportable production till prices reached a desired level, when these stocks could be released. But the plan has been a failure due to laxity in its implementation and galloping global coffee production. The resulting supply glut has seen prices crash, with the robusta variety languishing near 30-year lows and arabica at eight-year lows. Brazil, which had initiated the retention plan, blamed non-compliance by other producing countries, especially those in south-east Asia for its failure. Brazil now joins a growing list of countries that have decided to pull out. Earlier other big producers, Colombia, Mexico and El Salvador, said their commitment to the plan would end with the close of the 2000-01 (October-September) crop year.
