Alexandre, any comments?
Ulhas
I credit FHC, as he is widely known, with making four key contributions. First, under his leadership, Brazil firmly embraced human rights, not only in the sense of democratic elections, but in terms of economic justice for African-Brazilians and indigenous Brazilians, people who had long been discriminated against.
-Not true. The levels of unequality in Brazil remained unchanged in Cardoso´s years. We still have the highest Ginni index in Latin America
Like most of Latin America , Brazil was born in the crucible of conquest and slavery. Even during the Twentieth century, neither the indigenous populations nor the African-Brazilian slave descendants had much chance in the economic and social order. That is changing fast. Public education is becoming universally available, including for groups that faced harsh discrimination in the past.
-Yes, public education improved, but, given how Brazil was far worse than countries with the same level of development, this improvement was only from abysmal to very poor. And many teachers from the public schools are complaining that there was a dramatic worsening of quality standards.
Remarkably, indigenous groups also won ahard-fought struggle for land rights
in their traditional Amazon homelands.
-This has nothing to do with Cardoso, but with the 1988 Constitution.
Second, Brazil is finally embracing the global knowledge economy. For most of the Twentieth century, Brazilian elites thought that they could get by on natural resources - cattle ranches, coffee plantations, fruit juices, and soybean farms.
-Wrong again, actually, in the last five years, the share of agriculture in our GDP is increasing, while industry is in slow decline, an unprecending movement of desindustrialization.
Now they know that universal secondary education and extensive university-level training is also needed. Under FHC's reforms, enrolment rates in secondary education soared, from 15% in 1990 to 71% in 2000.
-Yes, access to secondary school improved
Equally important, Brazilian universities are seeing an increase in quality and attendance as well.
-Wrong, public universities are in the verge of collapse, while private universities have almost 40% of overcapacity. Private universities had a dramatic increase in the last 8 years, but they usually focuses on administrative or bureaucratic careers, no one is interested in scientists or engineers, and so we have excess of lawyers and managers, who have.... nothing to manage. Furthermore, the quality of those private universities is abysmal, as the data from the "Provão" (system of evaluation of graduation courses) proves.
Most of Latin America , including Brazil , ignored public investments in R&D for decades, while East Asian countries invested heavily. FHC appointed a series of outstanding ministers of science and technology, and the government finally began spending more on research and development.
-There was no increase in R&D spending under Mr. Cardoso
Brazil is becoming known not only for orange juice, but for aircraft exports like the Embraer jets that now compete with American and European producers for the regional commuter market.
-Embraer was created in the 70´s by the military governments. They already exported planes to the USA in the 70´s and 80´s. What happened is that privatization provided the enterprise with money to complete a project to occupy a void market space (those from 50 seats jets). Still, Embraer is a great exporter, but also a great importer, as most of components of those jets are foreign made.
Third, Brazil is coming out of its economic shell, competing in world markets rather than protecting national markets. For decades, due to rampant protectionism, the ratio of Brazil 's exports to GNP was one of the lowest in the world. That is finally changing. The export/GNP ratio has risen from 8% in 1990 to 13% in 2001, a sign that Brazil is beginning to seek out world markets. Lula is travelling widely to promote Brazilian exports, another sign that Brazil 's political economic orientation has become far more international.
-This increase had no effect on our anemic economic growth rates, and actually the trade balance deteriorated a lot in the first years of Mr. Cardoso, since he followed a policy of "cambial populism" which resulted on a overvaluated currency and large current account deficits (around 5% of GDP in 1997-2000). This was finally corrected by a the stagnation years from 1999-2003, where imports were cut as the country impoverished.
Fourth, Brazil is focusing on the health and productivity of its people. Under FHC, Brazil pioneered an effective response to the AIDS epidemic by guaranteeing access to antiretroviral medicines and to widespread counselling and viral testing. The hero of this effort, Dr Paulo Teixera, is now at the World Health Organisation helping to lead the global effort against AIDS.
-Yes, but the public healthcare system is close to collapse. Brazil has a mixed NHS style system, where most of healtcare is "purchased" from private non for profit organizations. The government improved somewhat the coverage of public health but WITHOUTH any increase of healthcare budget, quite the opposite, per capita health budget fell from 1994 to 2002. This was accomplished by freezing the costs of procedures paid to those private institutions. As a result, tey are virtually bankrupted, and quality of services is deteriorating a lot. And public institutions are in no better shape, as their budget was also cut in Cardoso´s years. The only good thing Mr. Cardoso did was the AIDS program that was, in ideological terms, opposed to his broad neoliberal policies, as it involved state owned laboratories, violation of patent laws and free distribution of medicines.
Brazil has also dramatically improved child health, with mortality rates of young children falling sharply, from 60 per thousand in 1990 to 36 per thousand in 2001.
-Again, as you see, Brazil in 1990 had pretty the same mortality rate of Maoist China in 1976 (which was a much poorer country). Now we did a HUGE progress, we are close to....Syria....
Brazil 's total fertility rate (average number of births per woman) has come down sharply as well, from 2.7 in 1990 to 2.2 in 2001.
-This is happening in virtually every country
With more children surviving to adulthood, poor families are choosing to have fewer children, and to invest more in their health and education. Population growth pressures are falling, providing a powerful long-term boost to Brazil 's economic development.
-Results in per capita GDP growth in the 90´s were pretty poor, around 1%/year.
Brazil 's economic turnaround may have powerfully positive effects on its neighbours, especially the struggling countries of the Andean region. This is the most likely scenario, but it is too early to declare victory.
-Turnaround? Where? We are going to grow by 3-4% this year, which will be a exceptional year to the World economy due to an unsustainable liquidity excess....and despite this, we are still growing less than the World economy as a whole.
Brazil still faces huge challenges. Lula will have to build on the work of FHC.
-That´s what I fear
Macroeconomic stability must be consolidated, with budget deficits brought decisively under control.
-To allow us to pay 10% of our GDP in interests, which places us in 4th place among countries with highest public debt interest spending in relation to GDP (close to paradises like Jamaica, Turkey and Lebanon). How this is compatible with those wonderful investments in health and education I can´t understand....
The political consensus in favour of universal education, outward-oriented trade, health for all, and a science-and-technology oriented economy must be strengthened. Brazil must also pay more attention to environmental management, especially in the fragile yet critical Amazon region, if it wants long-term, sustainable economic development.
-I don´t know to what extent a outward oriented economy is so good. What we gain from higher exports if our domestic demand is stagnated and people are impoverishing (yes, poverty levels and median income returned to 1994 levels after a short term improvement in the years of cambial populism, it´s estimated that average income of workers decreased by almost 10% in 2003)? The same question could be asket to Mexico? Trade is a mean to achieve prosperity, not an objective in itself. I think Brazil should strenght domestic demand, by following protecionist policies if necessary, while attempting to have a surplus in trade balance close to 2-4% of GDP (we need this surplus due to external debt)and keep exports close to 13-15% of GDP.A massive export oriented policy is not realistic, as we will never be able to compete with China for cheap manpower. Mexico attempted to have an export oriented economy and look what happened. Their economy is stagnated, wages are falling, and, because their wages aren´t low enough, employments are being outsourced to.... China. Didn´t the USA become a superpower based om internal demand? Already by 1900 the USA already had the biggest world economy, while exports were only 7% of GDP.
-Well, this guy seems to be so alienated from reality as it was when he prescribed shock therapy to Russia, resulting in a few million deaths and in a economic decline of unpreceding dimensions in peacetime. I don´t know how those geniuses win Nobel prizes...
Alexandre
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