Brazil may get a chance to shake off its image as the slowcoach of the fast-developing Bric economies this week, with second-quarter growth figures expected to reach 5.5 per cent, more than double the average of the past 15 years.

While Russia, India and China have long seen their economies grow faster than their peers in the developed world, Brazil has been more sluggish, despite the promise of a “spectacle of growth” by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva before his election in 2002. Some estimates ahead of the figures due to be released on Wednesday see growth running as high as 6.9 per cent, compared with 3.7 per cent last year.