RIO DE JANEIRO, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's financial market lowered its expectations for Brazil's 2018 GDP growth from 2.8 to 2.76 percent, the central bank's Focus poll revealed on Monday.

　　According to the poll, which tracks the views of around 100 financial analysts, this marks the third straight lowering of these predictions.

　　However, should current trends hold true, this would still be the country's best annual growth in five years, after the 3 percent seen in 2013.

　　The Brazilian economy is still emerging from a bitter two-year recession, when it contracted by 3.8 percent in 2015 and 3.6 percent in 2016, before returning to growth last year with just 1 percent.

　　For 2019, the analysts are predicting 3 percent growth.

　　Inflation estimates were also revised downwards from 3.53 percent to 3.48 percent. This would still come in below the central bank's annual target of 4.5 percent, and even within its margin of error of 1.5 percentage points.

　　Brazil ended 2017 with an inflation level of 2.95 percent, its best performance since 1998.

　　So far, 2018 has been a mixed bag, growing by 0.65 percent in January before falling to an anemic 0.09 percent in February, according to the central bank.