[24][25][26] In addition to the formal ceremony, Dilma's inauguration also featured performances by five Brazilian singers: Elba Ramalho, Fernanda Takai, Zélia Duncan, Mart'nália and Gaby Amarantos.

[44] Her government began with the departure of Henrique Meirelles from the presidency of the Central Bank, after eight years at the head of the institution, and the return of Alexandre Tombini, who, in his inauguration speech, defended a solid and efficient financial system as a condition for sustainable growth.

Some major economic difficulties arose from the change in the international context, reducing the favourable environment for national growth that Lula had found in his first government, and bringing unexpected challenges to the original plans, lowering expectations.

[49] Between 2010 and 2014, Brazil was the country that dropped the most positions in the world competitiveness ranking, falling from 38th place to 54th among the 60 economies analysed by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) and the Fundação Dom Cabral.

[50] During Dilma's first term in office, Brazil achieved the best competitiveness index in an annual list published by the World Economic Forum, which analyses 118 variables grouped into 12 different categories.

[53][54] Also in 2013, according to the Central Bank, the current account of Brazil, one of the main indicators of the state of the Brazilian economy (a figure which includes the results of the trade balance and other unrelated operations involving the inflow or outflow of capital – services and income), closed 2013 with an unprecedented deficit of US$81.37 billion.

Minister of Finance Guido Mantega also explained that the measure was also part of the process of reversing all the stimuli made to the Brazilian economy between 2009 and 2010 to avoid the negative effects of the international financial crisis.

[62] The Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento 2 was launched on 29 March 2010 and provided for resources in the order of R$1.59 trillion in a series of segments, such as transport, energy, culture, the environment, health, social areas and housing.

The ranking considers 84 indicators to evaluate elements of the national economy that favour innovation activities, such as institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, business improvement, as well as evidence manifested in knowledge and technology and creative results.

The big difference was having included 40 million people in the consumer market and this is fundamental because, in this crisis, there is no way to grow outwards because of the situation in the Eurozone, the difficulty of the American economy to resume faster growth and, above all, the Asian slowdown.

[76] In March 2012, the IBGE reported that the GDP in Dilma's first year in office grew by 2.7%, a performance below that expected by the financial market and by sectors of the government, such as the Ministry of Finance, which had forecast an expansion of around 3% for 2011.

Representing the financial market, Monica Baumgarten de Bolle, a professor at PUC-RJ and director of the Galanto consultancy, said that the better-than-expected performance of the economy in 2013 could dispel the pessimistic assessments that were beginning to emerge in the country.

[89][90] In 2014, after four years of Dilma's government, for the fifth time in a row, a survey carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Planning and Taxation (IBPT) named Brazil as the country with the worst tax return to the population.

The monthly result brought the 12-month accumulated rate to 6.30%, a level very close to the cap of the target pursued by the Central Bank, which caused concern among financial market economists and forced the government to adopt new credit restriction measures to control the economy's heat.

[118][119][120][121] Agribusiness, one of the strengths of the Dilma government, contributed 100 billion dollars in exports to the country and was a sector with great political influence, especially due to its strong presence in Congress as an allied base of the then president (the so-called Parliamentary Agricultural Front).

The opposition accused the president of electoral fraud, claiming that it was a maneuver to reduce electricity bills on the eve of the 2014 presidential campaign, but with the compensation provided, consumers would suffer an increase after the elections.

[140] According to Tereza Campello, former Minister of Social Development and Fight against Hunger, the programme was a success, lifting 22 million Brazilians above the poverty line:It was the end of misery, from the point of view of income, for the Bolsa Família public.

[140] The government has created other programmes, such as the Microempreendedor Individual, aimed at fostering small markets and providing technical and managerial assistance to micro-enterprises, present in 4,000 municipalities and, according to the Minister of Education, Henrique Paim, covering more than 6 million people by March 2014; and the Água para Todos, whose goal in 2014 was to build 750,000 cisterns and 6,000 collective supply systems for consumption, especially in the semi-arid region, had 725,820 families served by October of that year.

[141][142] In April 2011, Dilma travelled to China to expand business in the country, allowing for the production of Embraer aircraft, as well as gaining unprecedented approval for the export of pork, with the licencing of three meatpacking plants.

The text recalls that "austerity has aggravated recession, unemployment, inequality and the fiscal problem in developed countries even though it has been accompanied by very low real interest rates and currency devaluation".

At this meeting, Levy declared that the payroll tax exemption that Dilma promoted in her first term "was a joke that cost the public coffers R$25 billion a year, and studies showed that it had neither created nor protected jobs".

According to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), published by the newspaper O Globo, Brazil's external debt reached 750 billion dollars at the end of 2013; the equivalent of 1.8 trillion reais, or 33.45% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

[176][177] A month before the tournament, the renowned German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the World Cup could be a disaster because of protests, violence in the streets, problems with public transport, airports and stadiums.

The number of Brazilian citizens who travelled around the country during the World Cup was more than 3 million, with the state of São Paulo being the main source of domestic tourists (858,825), followed by Rio de Janeiro (260,527) and Minas Gerais (220,021).

Márcia Rosa, president of the Regional Council of Medicine of the State of Rio de Janeiro, said: "The changes [proposed by the government] put the health of the population at risk, especially those who use the SUS".

The positive result technically equaled (according to the margin of error of 2 percentage points) the record for the beginning of a government, 48%, obtained by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration in the first three months of 2007, referring to the former president's second term.

[213] After the Petrobras scandal surfaced, and with the worsening of the Brazilian economy, Dilma's popularity plummeted and reached the worst mark in the history of her government: from 42% in December 2014, it fell to 23% in February 2015, according to the Datafolha polling institute; the bad rating rose from 24% to 44% in the same period.

[219][220][221] On 21 June 2013, the day after the largest demonstration recorded at the time, Dilma canceled a trip to Japan and called an emergency meeting with some ministers, as well as the vice-president, and the president of the Chamber of Deputies.

[251][252][253][254] By criticizing the Federal Court of Accounts, which has accused seven PAC projects of overbilling, the president could, in the opinion of Jorge Oliveira, writing for Diário do Poder encourage the institutionalization of corruption.

[277][278][279]The acceptance of the impeachment request was seen by some of the media as retaliation against the president's party, whose deputies announced that same day that they would vote against Cunha in the Ethics Council, where he was investigated for his alleged participation in the scheme exposed in Car Wash Operation.