President-Elect of Brazil Readies Plan on Inflation : Economics: Experts say Fernando Collor de Mello must control runaway inflation quickly or lose credibility.

While other Brazilians reveled in the traditional Carnival holidays, President-elect Fernando Collor de Mello worked Monday on plans for taming inflation of more than 70% a month.

Collor, 40, takes office March 15, succeeding President Jose Sarney. During Sarney’s five years in office, inflation has totaled more than 1 million percent.

Over the weekend, the official Brian Institute of Geography and Statistics announced that inflation from mid-January to mid-February reached a record monthly rate of 72.78%. If compounded for 12 months, that would produce an annual rate of 70,682%.

“I have confessed several times--and I confess with absolute humility--that I was not successful in my plans for fighting inflation,” Sarney said last week.

Collor, elected in a Dec. 17 runoff vote, has likened Brazil’s inflation to a charging tiger and himself to a hunter with only one bullet in his rifle. He and many economists say he must control inflation in the first months of his administration or lose essential public credibility.

While recent public opinion polls have shown a high rate of public confidence in Collor, Brazilians look nervously at neighboring Argentina, where a new president last year appeared to be dominating inflation but has since lost control of the economy.

“The next president cannot err because any initial failure will cost him a tremendous loss in public opinion, dragging the country down the same tragic road as Argentina,” warned Marcos Cintra de Albuquerque, director of the Getulio Vargas Foundation School of Business Administration.

Collor has promised to reduce official spending and increase government efficiency, selling or closing many money-losing state enterprises and renegotiating Brazil’s $112-billion foreign debt. He has said he will take his first anti-inflationary measures immediately after his inauguration, vowing to reduce the monthly rate to 10% within 100 days.

Collor’s press adviser denied reports during the weekend that a possible freeze on the prices of food staples was being studied. The president-elect has said a price freeze does not mesh with his free-market policies.

On Monday, after Brazilians in many cities celebrated the pre-Lenten Carnival with a night of marathon parades and parties, Collor met all morning in Brasilia, the capital, with his economic team, headed by Zelia Cardoso de Mello.

“Collor and his team are taking advantage of the last Carnival days, Monday and Tuesday, to put the final touches on plans for economic and administrative reform,” the official news agency Radiobras said.