Reuters/Brasilia

Brazil’s government will rein in public spending to allow the economy to grow again but will do so at the minimum cost for the population, President Dilma Rousseff said in her inaugural address to Congress yesterday.
“We will prove that it is possible to make economic adjustments without revoking rights or betraying past commitments,” Rousseff said as she was sworn in for her second four-year term as Brazil’s president.
“More than anybody, I know Brazil needs to resume growth. The first steps of this journey are an overhaul of the public accounts, increasing domestic savings, beefing up investments and improving productivity.”
Since her re-election in October, Rousseff, 67, has signalled she would move away from the leftist, interventionist policies that have scared investors and dragged down Brazil’s once-booming economy.
Earlier thousands of supporters clad in party red gathered in the searing heat alongside pockets of detractors and visiting dignitaries, including US Vice President Joe Biden and 13 heads of state, for Rousseff’s swearing-in ceremony.
The 67-year-old former urban guerrilla rode in an open-top Rolls Royce down the Ministries Esplanade to Congress where she took oath and received the seals of office.
Thereafter, Rousseff, the 200mn-strong South American giant’s first female leader, presided over a ceremony formally nominating her 39-strong new cabinet team.
Key amongst them is orthodox pro-market Finance Minister Joaquim Levy, tasked with galvanising an economy which lumbered through left-wing Rousseff’s first term.
Levy has already drawn up plans to make savings, including a reduction in unemployment insurance.
Economic growth, forecast to come in barely above zero in 2014, has slumped badly compared with 2010’s heady heights of 7.5% under Rousseff’s Workers Party predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The world’s seventh-biggest economy boomed for a time under Silva, who put in place a decade ago the extensive welfare programmes which helped secure Rousseff’s narrow poll win in October over Social Democrat and business world favourite Aecio Neves.
A rare bright spot on the economy is that the official jobless rate in November stood at a record low of 4.8%.
Rousseff’s second term also starts with her government dogged by scandal amid a legal probe into a huge network of corruption at Petrobras, the state oil firm she used to chair.
The scandal and ongoing police investigation - dubbed “Operation Car Wash” - erupted just months before Rousseff won re-election, but failed to derail her campaign.
So far suspicion has fallen on 39 people, including former Petrobras directors and pro-government politicians, a network which allegedly laundered around $3.8bn creamed off from inflated contracts.
Rousseff says she will leave “no stone unturned” with regard to the probe, while giving a vote of confidence to Petrobras head and ally Graca Foster.