By Benjamin Forgat
(Opinion) Even if many don’t want to hear or believe it, Brazil gets closer every day to becoming a truly global economic powerhouse.
While other regions in the world are sinking into chaos, the incumbent government has not only steered the giant tanker Brazil, which alone accounts for more than 50% of South American GDP, into safe waters, but has improved the country’s standing in the world.
Brazil is growing much stronger than ‘forecasters’ would have ever dreamed of, has lower inflation than the rest of the world, and is a safe haven for investment.
The country is back among the world’s 10 largest economies and has burned no bridges with anyone thanks to its neutrality in the Ukraine war.
After having had one of the highest inflation rates in the world in recent months, Brazil has reversed the scenario of rising prices sooner than other countries.
This assessment was presented in a report by UBS, the largest Swiss and most significant private bank in the world.
According to the article “From Ugly Duckling to Swan,” Brazil will tend to return to the bottom of the global ranking in the coming months.
The country is now the world’s number 1 destination for Chinese investments and number 4 for all other cross-border investments.
According to Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citigroup analysts, Brazil is the best bet in Latin America.
That is why Jair Bolsonaro’s government has already secured investment commitments of R$925 billion (US$180 billion) over the next decade through privatizations and concessions.
Brazil’s global soft power picked up speed in 2022, leaving Argentina and Mexico further behind. In this context, Brazil ranked 28th, according to the report, a significant increase from 35th place last year.
Brazil’s government debt fell to a minimum since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic when fiscal data were favorable, Brazil’s Central Bank (BC) figures showed.
Since 2018, Jair Bolsonaro’s government has implemented a series of structural reforms, such as
- the Economic Freedom Law,
- the Enterprise Law,
- the new Agrarian Law,
- the Taxpayers Law or the reform of
- the Fiscal Responsibility Law,
- the new Tender Law,
- the Voluntary Deposits Law and
- the new Electricity Sector Framework,
to name a few, which have allowed wealth to be created in the country.
Today, Brazil has the lowest unemployment rate since 2015 (9.1 percent) and has set an all-time record in registered employment with 98.7 million workers.
Last year, Brazil already set a record by creating more than 2.7 million jobs.
In 2021 alone, four million businesses were created in Brazil.
Thanks to reforms, the time to open a business has been reduced to 1 day and 23 hours, as the Brazilian government is the most digitalized in the Americas and the seventh most digitalized in the world.
Brazil now has one of the largest industrial parks in the world and is a major producer of niobium, iron, copper, aluminum, and manganese.
The industrial sector shows optimism about the economy in the coming months.
It is also an agricultural power and one of the largest food producers in the world.
The government raised its forecast for this year’s grain harvest to 263 million tonnes, 3.8 percent more than in 2021, which would set a new record for the country.
Last year, Brazil harvested 253.2 million tonnes of cereals, pulses, and oilseeds, 0.8 percent less than the record 255.4 million tonnes in 2020, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
In August, it recorded the largest corn harvest in the country’s history.
Since Bolsonaro took office, Brazil has signed 15 trade agreements and opened more than 200 agricultural markets.
It is one of the world’s leading producers of coffee, sugar, corn, soybeans, beef, pork, chicken, and fruit, and the World Trade Organisation has recognized its important role in global food security.