Brazil Finance Minister Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira...

Brazil Finance Minister Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira said he was pessimistic aboutchances of lifting the country’s moratorium on interest payments on its $70-billion foreign bank debt. Brazil has agreed to make a symbolic payment of interest arrears by Dec. 31, but Bresser Pereira told a Sao Paulo newspaper that the government had not lifted the moratorium it decreed in February. “I am pessimistic about that (lifting it),” he said. “The payment of$500 million, under the interim accord, that the country will make by Dec. 31, is not the end of the moratorium. Brazil will not be current on its payment of interest after Jan. 1 by drawing from its reserves.”