Brazil’s Quickening First-Quarter Growth Fans Inflation Risk

Brazil’s economy gained speed in the first quarter, challenging President Dilma Rousseff’s efforts to cool growth and bring inflation to its target by next year.

Gross domestic product expanded 1.3 percent in the first quarter from the previous three-month period and 4.2 percent from a year earlier, the national statistics agency said today in Rio de Janeiro. Both figures matched the median forecasts of economists in a Bloomberg survey. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2010 from the previous three months was revised to 0.8 percent from 0.7 percent.