Brazil Selic Rate: Monthly Data Since 1996

This dataset is the Brazil Selic rate, the effective overnight rate (Selic Over) that the Banco Central do Brasil publishes for each business day as series 11 of its SGS time-series system. Eco3min compounds the daily rates into a monthly rate annualized on 252 business days, the central bank’s own convention. The file runs from October 1996, with a high of 45.90% in November 1997 and a low of 1.90% held from September 2020 to February 2021.

Dataset: Brazil Selic Rate (1996–2026) · Updated 2026-10-01

Data provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy or timeliness. Check any figure against the primary source cited on this page before using it. Terms: legal notice.

Source: Banco Central do Brasil, SGS series 11 (Selic), monthly aggregation by Eco3min · ODbL 1.0

Macro Takeaway

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV, Excel and JSON files contain the following columns.

Column names match the CSV headers exactly. The selic_rate column carries the effective Selic (Selic Over); the Copom target is published separately as SGS series 432.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full Brazil Selic rate dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.

Data provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy or timeliness. Check any figure against the primary source cited on this page before using it. Terms: legal notice.

Source Data Access: Banco Central do Brasil SGS API

The daily series is available without a key from the SGS API of the Banco Central do Brasil, under series code 11. Since 26 March 2025, requests for a daily series are limited to ten years of data each:

https://api.bcb.gov.br/dados/serie/bcdata.sgs.11/dados?formato=json&dataInicial=01/09/2016&dataFinal=31/08/2026

Replacing 11 with 4189 in the address returns the official monthly series, and with 432 the Copom target.

Direct CSV Access – Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/brazil-selic-rate.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/brazil-selic-rate.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(df.tail())
print(df["selic_rate"].describe())

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/brazil-selic-rate.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

tail(df)
summary(df$selic_rate)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL, with no download or API key required.

Methodology

The source is series 11 of the Banco Central do Brasil time-series system (SGS), maintained by its Open Market Operations Department. The central bank defines it as the adjusted average rate of one-business-day repurchase operations backed by federal government securities held in the Selic custody system, published for each business day in percent per day since June 1986. The file keeps the October 1996 start of its earlier versions: in 106 of the 124 months before that date, years of high inflation, the compounded rate exceeds the file’s 45.90% high. The Eco3min pipeline reads the series from the SGS API and compounds each month into an annual rate on a 252-business-day basis:

monthly rate = ((1 + r1/100) × (1 + r2/100) × … × (1 + rn/100))^(252/n) − 1

Here r1 to rn are the daily rates of the month and n its number of business days, and the result is expressed in percent. This is the convention of the central bank’s own monthly series, SGS 4189. The month in progress is left out until it is complete, values are rounded to four decimals, and the CSV, Excel and JSON files are rebuilt in full on each run rather than appended, so any correction at source propagates automatically.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

Checked against the official monthly series. Rebuilt from the daily data, the file matches SGS 4189, the monthly Selic that the Banco Central do Brasil publishes itself, to the hundredth in 358 of the 359 months checked on 30 September 2026. The exception, July 1997 (19.045% against 19.04%), is a rounding difference.

Licence. The Banco Central do Brasil publishes SGS series 11 on its open data portal under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. The licence permits commercial reuse and adaptation on three conditions: attribution to the Banco Central do Brasil, a reference to the licence, and publication of any adapted database under the same ODbL (share-alike). The monthly file is such an adaptation and is offered under ODbL 1.0, not under a Creative Commons licence. Eco3min text and analysis: CC BY 4.0. Data, files and charts remain subject to their producer’s terms, stated on each page; Eco3min grants no licence over third-party data.

Alternative sources. SGS series 4189 carries the same monthly figure, published by the central bank itself, and series 432, from 5 March 1999, the target announced by the Copom.

Source change on 30 September 2026. Until that date this page and its files carried a different series, a discount rate for Brazil compiled by the International Monetary Fund. Files downloaded before that date are not comparable with the current series.

Common Pitfalls When Using This Series

1. It is the effective rate, not the Copom target. The Copom sets a target for the Selic at each meeting, published as SGS series 432. This file records the rate at which overnight operations actually settled, compounded over the month. The effective rate settles just below the target, which is why a month spent entirely under a 15% target prints 14.90%.
2. Reading the nominal level as tightness. A double-digit nominal rate in Brazil and a low single-digit rate in the United States do not describe comparable monetary stances. Brazilian inflation history, the term premium attached to it, and the currency risk embedded in local rates all sit inside that number. Comparisons across countries require deflating by each country’s own inflation, and even then the exercise is imperfect.
3. Treating the late-1990s peaks as a policy stance. The three readings above 40%, in November 1997, October 1998 and March 1999, were currency defences, under a crawling peg until January 1999 and against the fall of the newly floating real in March, not domestic inflation-targeting decisions. Brazil adopted inflation targeting in 1999, after the float. Averaging across that break produces a mean that describes neither regime.
4. Assuming monthly granularity reflects decision dates. Copom meets roughly every six weeks, and this series reports monthly. A month containing a decision compounds the days either side of it: August 2020, with a cut to 2% effective on the 6th, prints 1.94%, between the 2.15% of July and the 1.90% of September. The monthly steps therefore do not align exactly with announced changes.

Historical Regimes

1996–1999 – Defending the real. The series opens at 23.48% in October 1996 and averages 26.99% from then to December 1998, before the float. The three readings above 40% mark the crises: the file’s high of 45.90% in November 1997 as the Asian crisis spread, 41.60% in October 1998 after the Russian default, and 43.25% in March 1999. By then the January float had taken the dollar from 1.21 reais on 4 January to 2.20 on 3 March. The Copom target series begins on 5 March 1999, at 45%. The rate is functioning as a currency defence.

1999–2003 – The unwind, and a relapse. The unwind was the fastest in the file, 24.40 points in the twelve months to March 2000, and the rate reached 15.20% in February 2001. The 2002 election cycle interrupted the descent, taking the rate back to 23.03% in December 2002 and 26.32% in April 2003, the highest since May 1999.

2003–2013 – Inflation targeting settles in. The 2000s average 16.26% and the 2010s 9.90%, a structural step down as the targeting framework accumulated credibility. Waypoints: 19.75% in August 2005, 13.66% in October 2008 as the global financial crisis broke, 8.65% for eight months from August 2009 to March 2010, and 7.11% in January 2013, at the time the lowest reading in the file.

2015–2016 – Recession and a long hold. Through a deep domestic recession the rate was raised and then held at 14.15% for fourteen consecutive months, from August 2015 to September 2016, its highest level since September 2006. The Copom target stood at 14.25% throughout.

2017–2019 – Disinflation and the longest plateau. With inflation falling the rate went below 7% in December 2017, for the first time in the file. It then held at 6.40% for sixteen consecutive months, from April 2018 to July 2019, the longest unchanged stretch in the file, and reached 4.19% in February 2020, the low of the pre-pandemic era.

2020–2021 – The pandemic floor. Eleven months print below 3%, from June 2020 to April 2021, and the series reaches 1.90%, held from September 2020 through February 2021 while the Copom target stood at 2%. That floor is the lowest since the daily series began in June 1986, and less than half the lowest pre-pandemic reading in the file.

2021–2026 – Back up, a 15% target, then cuts. From 1.90% in February 2021 the rate reached 8.76% by December of the same year, a 6.86-point rise in ten months, then held at 13.65% for eleven months, from September 2022 to July 2023. It eased to 10.40% by June 2024 before a new tightening took it to 14.90%, held from July 2025 to February 2026 under a 15% target, its highest level since July 2006. Five cuts of 0.25 point from March 2026 brought the target to 13.75% on 17 September 2026. The file stands at 13.94% in August 2026, above 57% of the months in its own history.

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Sources

• Banco Central do Brasil – SGS series 11, Taxa de juros – Selic, daily, under ODbL 1.0
• Banco Central do Brasil – SGS series 4189, Selic accumulated in the month and annualized on 252 business days, the official monthly series used as a check
• Banco Central do Brasil – SGS series 432, Selic target set by the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom)
• Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System – effective federal funds rate (monthly) and USD/BRL exchange rate (H.10, daily), for the comparisons in the Macro Takeaway and Historical Regimes
• Eco3min Research – monthly aggregation and structured dataset compilation

Dataset Reference

Eco3min Research. (2026). Brazil Selic Rate: Monthly Data (1996–2026). Source: Banco Central do Brasil, SGS series 11, ODbL 1.0.<br> https://eco3min.fr/en/brazil-selic-rate-dataset/