Excesso? O debate sobre o nível das reservas internacionais no Brasil

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, peripheral countries have accumulated international reserves in response to the successive exchange rate crises of this period. Since then, keeping stocks of reserves has become a strategy for managing the foreign exchange policy of these economies, especially since the global financial crisis of 2008, when there was an accelerated increase in foreign assets in peripheral countries, made possible by the improvement in the terms of exchanges and low international interest rates. In Brazil, international reserves increased from US$ 36,3 billion in 1999, to US$ 206,8 billion in 2008 and US$ 345,7 billion in 2020. However, the accumulation of international reserves has the counterpart of generating costs associated with its maintenance, giving rise to the debate about an optimal level of reserves for Brazil. More recently, the deterioration of fiscal indicators in Brazil prompted a debate about alternative uses for excess reserves, with emphasis on proposals to use it to reduce the public debt or to finance public investment. This article aims to contribute to this debate, arguing that the full level of international reserves should be preserved.