Good morning! This week, food prices falling faster in Brazil than abroad. A never-ending nuclear power plant construction may be buried. And medical clinical trials almost disappear post-Covid.
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Winning the food price race
After years of spiraling inflation that led to eye-watering hikes in the price of weekly grocery shopping in Brazil, the opposite trend is now emerging and the cost of food is toppling faster than the global average.
By the numbers. Brazil’s IPPA index, which measures prices paid to agricultural producers in four different categories, fell by 11.2 percent in Q2. Over the same period, the exchange rate fell by 4.7 percent, and the Food Price Index of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) fell by 3.3 percent.
- The IPPA measure, carried out by the Center of Advanced Studies in Applied Economics (Cepea), shows a 13.3 percent fall in food prices for the first six months of 2023, compared with the same period last year.
Biggest ‘losers.’ The steep decline in prices can largely be attributed to the...