Brazil cut its benchmark interest rate for the eighth straight time and signaled it will continue to lower borrowing costs, as spillover from a global economic slowdown limits inflation risks.

Central bank board members voted unanimously yesterday to cut the benchmark Selic rate by a half-point to a record 8 percent, as forecast by all but three of 59 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. In a statement almost identical to ones issued at their two previous meetings, policy makers said “fragility” abroad is having a “disinflationary” impact in the world's second-biggest emerging market, providing little guidance about how much more stimulus they judge necessary to revive growth.

“It's hard to see right now what the floor is for the Selic,” Jankiel Santos, chief economist at Espirito Santo Investment Bank, said by telephone from Sao Paulo. “They left the door wide open for more cuts.”