Brazil rejects OECD estimate for lower growth, higher inflation

A Brazilian official on Wednesday criticized a report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which predicted Brazil's GDP growth will slow down in the next two years. "The OECD looks back and underestimates Brazil's capacity to respond to the challenges today," said Brazil's Economic Policy Secretary Marcio Holland. Holland said the OECD is "underestimating the Brazilian economy's capacity to recover from shocks" caused by external events. "Maybe it is contaminated by the difficulties of the industrialized countries' narrowness of reaction," he noted. The OECD said the growth of Brazil's gross domestic product will slow down to 3.6 percent in 2011 from 7.5 percent in 2010. In the next two years, the OECD predicted the country's economic growth will grow less than 4 percent. It also said it expects Brazil's inflation rate to reach 6.2 percent in 2011.