Comment on Rousseff urges investors to get on Brazil bandwagon

New York (AFP) - Brazil's economy is ready for a new period of growth after sputtering for years, and investors should get on board now, President Dilma Rousseff said Monday.Brazil was once the star of the world's emerging economies, posting torrid economic growth that brought many among its legions of poor into the middle class.Its economy is the biggest in Latin America and the seventh largest in the world.However, now it has posted only tepid growth for the past four years, and the government forecasts it will close this year with a 1.2 percent contraction.Rousseff, visiting the United States since late Saturday, addressed a seminar organized by her government on plans for a major infrastructure program with hundreds of contracts in the offing."We are building the foundations of a new cycle of enhanced growth, and inflationary control measures, as well as budgetary balance, are part of this strategy," she said.Rousseff spoke at a seminar coordinated by Laurence Fink, head of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager.Afterward, addressing reporters, she angrily dismissed weekend press reports back home that her campaign had accepted illegal donations in 2014 as part of a graft scandal involving state owned oil giant Petrobras.