Brazil"s central bank considered an interest rate hike of bigger than 1.50 percentage point last week amid assessments that recent fiscal deterioration required its monetary tightening process, among the most aggressive in the world, to be more restrictive, minutes from its last policy meeting showed on Tuesday. The minutes of the Dec. 7-8 meeting, when the rate-setting committee known as Copom raised the benchmark rate to 9.25%, showed policymakers compared these scenarios with others in which the interest rate would remain high for a longer period than that implied in the baseline scenario. The central bank concluded that adjustments of 1.50 percentage point at this moment are "adequate to reach, throughout the process of monetary tightening, a level restrictive enough not only to ensure the convergence of inflation over the relevant horizon but also to consolidate the anchoring of longer-term expectations." Last week, Brazil"s central bank already signaled it would again raise interest rates by 150 basis points at the next meeting in February, as it fulfils its commitment to take monetary tightening "significantly into the restrictive territory." After the government supported new looser budget rules, which were now partially approved by the Congress, the central bank said in the minutes that the risk of a deanchoring of longer-term inflation expectations pointed to an upward bias for the projections of its baseline scenario, which imposed the need for a more restrictive monetary policy. With inflation forecasts drifting above the bank"s 3.5% target for 2022 and larger spending limits now set in Brazil"s constitution as President Jair Bolsonaro heads towards next year"s election, economists have warned that rate hikes may hurt economic activity that has already declined in the second and third quarters. read more The central back said it revised downward its expectations for activity in the short term, after third quarter gross domestic product (GDP) - which contracted 0.1% from the previous quarter - came slightly lower than expected. Driven by dramatically higher energy and fuel prices and a weaker currency, consumer prices rose 10.74% in the 12 months through November, far above the government"s annual target of 3.75%, with a 1.5 percentage point margin of error on either side. Reporting by Marcela Ayres; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Chizu Nomiyama Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.