Word: brazil
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...then used that as a base on which to weld social programs, such as Bolsa Família, a grant scheme that has paid out more than $20 billion in aid to poor families in return for parents getting their children vaccinated and making sure they attend school. Brazil's business leaders insist record profits during the 2005-2008 boom allowed Lula to aid the poor; Lula argues his antipoverty crusade fueled the economic growth. It's a chicken-and-egg debate, in which both sides are right. What matters is that social stimulus programs like Bolsa...
...Better Life Whatever the explanation, the philosophy has done the President well. Two years into his second and final term, Lula has an 80% approval rating. This suggests that despite the recession, most Brazilians still feel they're winning. "It was very difficult to change social class in Brazil 10 years ago, or even four years ago," says Luis Minori of the market-research firm Ipsos. "Now people have access to microcredit and computers and other means of social mobility." In that sense Brazil has outperformed even China and India, Neri claims, because "poverty is falling [in those places...
...downturn has slowed growth, but it has not stopped it. To make Brazil even more business-friendly, the government is spending $263 billion on tax breaks and infrastructure. Like Lula's social projects, the Growth Acceleration Program, which began in 2007, was funded largely by high commodity prices, most of which have now plummeted. But Brazil seems to have invested the windfall smartly. Exports have been diversified so as to reduce reliance on commodities, and before the downturn the nation socked away a record $208 billion in foreign reserves. The banking system has remained well regulated, and so far seems...
...Latin leaders, Lula wants Obama to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. And he is keen (he may be disappointed) to see the U.S. throw its weight behind a last effort to save the Doha round of world trade talks, which could offer farm-export nations such as Brazil new opportunities...
...confidence that Brazil is showing abroad, there's a lot to fix at home. Aside from corruption, Brazil's public bureaucracy is one of the world's most wasteful. Education, despite increased funding and access, is an embarrassment: students consistently score near the bottom of international math, science and reading tests. Exorbitant taxes and violent crime scare off foreign investors, and in the Amazon, deforestation remains a problem...