India’s activity suffered from waning business confidence amid slow approvals for new projects and sluggish structural reforms and policy environment designed to rein in inflation. Brazil’s economy, in the first quarter of 2012, grew at its slowest pace (at 0.2 per cent q-o-q) in more than two years.
Brazil has been hit by falling commodity prices and capital outflows, and central and Eastern Europe, by weak demand in the EU and retrenchment by euro area banks. 17. Many of the larger and faster growing EDEs are close to, or above, potential, which suggests that they will not be able to drive global growth as before.