RIO DE JANEIRO, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles said Monday that the country's economic recovery was going so well that it will create 2.5 million jobs in 2018.

"We stopped having growth like a duck in flight to have that of an eagle," Meirelles told a business forum in the southern Rio Grande do Sul state, adding that the government was "creating long-term growth."

After seeing an economic contraction of 7 percent in 2015 and 2016 combined, Brazil returned to 1 percent growth in 2017 along with low inflation, Meirelles explained.

This situation will favor "the creation of 2.5 million new jobs in 2018" thanks to the fiscal and labor reforms carried out over the past year by President Michel Temer's administration.