The purpose of this historical essay is to follow Brazil’s relationship with IMF, in the context of the international monetary order, since Bretton Woods up to our days. The essay starts by IMF’s itinerary, emphasizing the 1971 change in the exchange regime pattern, follows the development of its relationship with Brazil, the various formal stand-by agreements contracted under different economic policies, arising from current transactions crises; a first agreement was adopted in 1958, and discontinued for political reasons, but the last one, concluded in 2003, was also interrupted for political reasons two years later. Attention was given to the main problems facing the IMF – exchange stability, liquidity, and the monitoring of the national economies – and to the circumstances that forced Brazil to enter into formal agreements with the IMF. Brazil’s relationship with the IMF was somewhat erratic, with phases of attraction followed by others of repulsion; there was a cooperative stance – at the beginning and during the whole military regime, as well as around the turn of the millennium –, another confrontational or adversarial – in the Kubitschek government and at the redemocratization – to arrive at a transformation from dependent borrower to a creditor pushing for reforms in order to enhance its voting rights in both Bretton Woods institutions; a final table summarizes those agreements and the amounts involved in each one.
Brazil; IMF; agreements; exchange regimes; external debt; current transactions crises