Brazil Pulse - President’s Temer Evaluation is Still Considered Bad For Most of the Population - March 2017

Country's directions

The highly negative confidence indicator in the country reflects the existing lack of perspective regarding the current Government and the future of Brazil. The reforms that are on the Government’s agenda, and which started to be present in the lives of Brazilians, lead to insecurity because they are difficult for the general public to understand. Also, there is the general feeling of a loss of rights and the serious implications for the future, creating an increase of distrust in Brazil.

President's evaluation

The evaluation of Michel Temer’s administration continues at very negative levels, with 62% of bad or very bad. The political instability and the institutional crisis that the country is experiencing is part of the explanation for this negative evaluation - the lack of expectations about the future of the current administration, as shown by the Pulso Brasil data, feeds this lack of perspective. The inactive FGTS account withdrawals was seen by the population very positively, but only 1/3 of Brazilians associate it to President Temer. When this association is made, the President’s evaluation tends to be more favorable. However, it is still not possible to predict how this can significantly impact on improving his evaluation in the eyes of the public. Pulso Brasil will continue monitoring.

Consumer confidence index

Consumer confidence remains stagnated at negative levels, be it for the commitment to larger-size purchases, be it on a daily basis at supermarkets (the shopping habits of Brazilian continues the same as from 1 year ago, the peak of the political-economic crisis). Despite the federal Government having announced 35 thousand new formal jobs in March, the unemployment data continues alarming - there are now 13.5 million unemployed. These numbers reflect on the indicators of consumption confidence and those related to job safety, which continue to be the most negative, thus impacting any consumption retake tendency. The domestic CCI also shows some worrying data: the future confidence indicators (next 6 months) continue to drop, proving the high correlation with the country’s political confidence indicators.