After reducing the price of gasoline sold to distributors three times between July and August, government-controlled oil major Petrobras announced another BRL 0.25 cut this morning, which will take the price of type-A gasoline down from BRL 3.53 per liter to BRL 3.28.
Falling prices are in line with international trends, but it is still unclear when this latest cut will reach end consumers at the pumps.
Successive cuts led to Brazil’s biggest monthly deflation on record in July, though falling fuel prices masked rising services costs.
Last week, Central Bank chief Roberto Campos Neto said he expects prices in Brazil to go down for the next “two to three months.”
Despite denying government interference in Petrobras, President Jair Bolsonaro has swapped out the company’s CEO four times since taking office, and hinted towards today’s gasoline cuts while speaking to the press yesterday, saying that Brazil should expect “good news” by the end of the week.
Struggling to gain any ground on election frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Mr. Bolsonaro hopes that falling fuel prices will give him just enough of a boost to force the vote to a second round runoff.
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