Brazil exits recession... and that's about it

Unemployed people read announcements of job offers in Sao Paulo. Brazil ended eight straight quarters of contraction in the first quarter.

Brazil emerged from its worst-ever recession in the first quarter of 2017, officials said, but political turmoil continued to threaten the weak recovery.
Largely thanks to booming agro-industry results, the economy grew one per cent for the quarter, ending eight consecutive quarters of shrinkage, the state statistics office said.
That offered a glimmer of light for Latin America's biggest economy. It could also throw a lifeline to President Michel Temer as he tries to survive a corruption scandal.
Data from the IBGE statistics bureau put the good news in its dismal context: the first quarter's GDP was down 0.4 per cent compared to the same period in 2016.
Overall the economy dropped a whopping 3.8 per cent in 2015 and 3.6 per cent in 2016, meaning Brazil has a long way to climb back up.
But Temer celebrated: "Brazil has left the recession," he said. "We are growing."
Finance Minister Henrique Mereilles called it a "historic day" after Brazil's "worst recession in a century" that has seen millions lose their jobs.
"There is still some way to go to achieve a full economic recovery, but we are heading in the right direction," he said in a statement.
"Brazil has finally exited recession," but "the recovery will be stop-start," analyst Neil Shearing of research group Capital Economics wrote in a note on Thursday.
He warned of the risk of weaker growth in the second quarter - "and that's before the full effects of the latest political crisis are felt."
Economist Mauro Rochlin at Brazil's Getulio Vargas Foundation told AFP the recession cannot be considered to be over until a second quarter of growth is registered.
He said the economy had sunk so low that businesses had gotten a boost from falling wages. He saw a "trend towards recovery, but with still quite a narrow base."
The first-quarter bounce was led by a surge from Brazil's giant agro-industry, up 13.4 per cent. This, economists say, skewed the overall GDP figure because it is based largely on record harvests collected at the start of the year.
The industrial sector grew 0.9 per cent. Services were flat and while that was an improvement on negative growth, it also signalled a lack of confidence by a public battered by unemployment and continuously falling family consumption.