[lbo-talk] Jeffrey Sachs on Brazil

uvj at vsnl.com uvj at vsnl.com
Tue Feb 17 18:11:40 PST 2004


Alexandre Fenelon wrote:
>> 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.

This is surprising. Can you expand this little more?


> -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.

Is there no process of indigenising component manufacturing?


> -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.

What are the principal bottlenecks to growth in Brazilian economy in your view? Is land reform still relevant to Brazilian agriculture?

Thanks,

Ulhas



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