Brazilian shares up 7.4% currency down 9.43%

Brazil's Sao Paulo Stock Exchange(Bovespa) witnessed a 7.4-percent rise in share prices this year, the best performance since 2009, local press said on Friday. Bovespa's Ibovespa index closed at 60,952 points on the last trading day of the year, up 0.89 percent from the day before. The index remained stable in the past week and have risen by 6 percent throughout December. The figures were in sharp contrast to those in 2011, when Bovespa index registered an 18-percent fall. Heavyweights listed on the market posted mixed performance. Brazil's largest state-controlled oil company Petrobras reported a 15-percent drop in the value of its common shares and a 9.16-percent fall in preferred shares. Mining giant Vale fared better as its common shares rose 7.17 percent and preferred shares 8.06 percent. In another development, Brazilian currency, the real, depreciated considerably by 9.43 percent against the U.S. dollar in 2012, though it regained recently some of the lost ground. The real-dollar exchange rate closed at 2.04:1 on Friday, up 0.05 percent from Thursday. In the past week, the real appreciated by 1.4 percent, bringing the total gain to 4.03 percent in December. Over the course of the year, the Brazilian government encouraged the appreciation of the dollar, because a lower real could benefit Brazilian exports by making them more competitive on the international market.