Brazil - Roberto Campos Neto’s Final Year at BCB and Plan DREX
Brazil’s digital real policy (DREX) will face significant challenges in 2024. Brazilian banks and technology firms are testing DREX while Lula’s government looks Roberto Campos Neto’s successor.
It is an important year for Brazil’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) experiment. In August 2023, the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) baptized the CBDC with the name DREX, a mash-up acronym for the words Digital, Real and Electronico. The X is apparently a stand in for the concept of Modernity. In 2024, the BCB plans to execute a series of technical tests and evaluations with allied banks before a full-scale rollout sometime at the end of this year or the beginning of 2025.