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Brazil's battered currency reached a new low today, as concerns grew about the nation's fragile finances.
The government dispatched a mission to Washington today for talks with the International Monetary Fund in an effort to calm market fears. Finance Minister Pedro Malan said a deal with the fund to extend or increase its current $15 billion program that expires in December could be sealed "in the next days or weeks."
And the central bank said late today that it had earmarked another $1.84 billion, or about $50 million a day, to spend in the foreign currency markets to defend the currency, the real, continuing a policy begun earlier this month that has so far failed to halt a slide. Today, the real ended down about 3.8 percent, to nearly 3.3 for every United States dollar — the weakest the currency has been since its debut in 1994. The real has now lost about 30 percent of its value against the dollar this year.
Brazil sent the mission, headed by Amaury Bier, a top Finance Ministry official, and Ilan Goldfajn, the central bank's economic policy director, to Washington after a telephone conversation between Mr. Malan and Horst Köhler, the managing director of the I.M.F., on Monday.
Haunted by the specter of the collapse in neighboring Argentina, Brazil, South America's largest economy, has been pummeled in recent weeks by market fears over its political future, its capacity to meet payments on its burgeoning $250 billion public debt and mixed signals over whether fresh I.M.F. aid would be made available.
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