* Brazil to charge 2 pct financial tax on capital inflows
* New tax will apply to fixed-income and stock investments
* Aims to prevent "excessive" surge of local currency
* Foreign direct investment will remain untaxed (Adds Mantega quotes, details, context, comment)
By Paula Laier and Todd Benson
SAO PAULO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Brazil unveiled plans on Monday to tax capital inflows heading to fixed-income investments and stocks in a bid to prevent the country's hard-charging currency from strengthening further.
Finance Minister Guido Mantega said the government will charge a 2 percent financial transactions tax on foreign investment flows to Brazil's stock market and local fixed-income securities such as government bonds.
The tax, which will take effect on Tuesday, will be charged only once, when the capital enters the country, Mantega said. He stressed that foreign direct investment would continue to flow freely into Brazil, untaxed.
"Our concern is with excessive speculative investments, short-term capital that could cause a bubble," Mantega told reporters in Sao Paulo, where he outlined the measure after meeting with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who had initially opposed the tax.
"Nothing changes with respect to foreign direct investment," he added. "We'll continue to encourage foreign investment. Foreign investors are welcome, and they'll continue to come."
The levy resurrects a financial transactions tax on fixed-income investments the government scrapped last October, when the global credit crisis took a turn for the worse and investment flows dried up.
Unlike in the past, however, foreign capital flocking to Brazilian stocks will also be taxed.
The measure aims to put the brakes on Brazil's currency,
the real
Brazil's stock market has also been a magnet for foreign investment this year, helping lift the benchmark Bovespa index <.BVSP> 79 percent since the start of the year.
EXPORTERS SUFFERING
The real's rally has hit exporters especially hard. They have aggressively lobbied the government in recent months to take action to halt the currency's gains.
"With our currency overvalued, we're going to export less and we're going to be less competitive," Mantega said, noting that 25 percent of Brazil's industrial output is shipped to foreign markets.
The tax had been rumored to be in the works for weeks, causing some unease in the currency market. But the rate of the levy -- 2 percent -- was larger than expected, which could have a negative impact on the market in the near term, RBC Capital Markets said in a research note.
But it is unclear if the measure will ultimately staunch the flood of foreign money into Brazil, whose robust economy and red-hot capital markets have made it a favorite with investors around the globe.
Economists note that the real's surge this year is partly the result of a weaker U.S. dollar globally, a trend that is beyond the control of Brazilian policymakers.
Brazil's central bank has sought to soak up excess dollars on the currency market in recent months by intervening daily to buy greenbacks. But the practice has done little to rein in the real, which is trading at a 13-month high.
Mantega said the central bank would keep buying dollars on the spot market to bolster international reserves, which have surged to an all-time high of $232.3 billion.
Some economists said the government could have adopted other measures to halt the real's appreciation, such as cutting public spending and lowering import tariffs on capital goods, which would increase demand for U.S. dollars.
"Either of those alternatives would be preferable to the imposition of this tax," Dough Smith, head of research for the Americas at Standard Chartered Bank in New York, wrote in a note to clients. ($1=1.712 reais) (Writing by Todd Benson; Editing by Dan Grebler)