Major economies floundering, Brazil’s primary surplus

While there were some positive signs from the latest activity data for Brazil and Mexico, both economies seem to have started 2022 on the backfoot. Otherwise, fiscal figures show that Brazil's government ran a primary budget surplus in 2021 (for the first time since 2013), but much of the improvement came from one-off factors which are likely to unwind this year. Accordingly, there's a lot more work to do to stabilise the public finances.