Brazil: the GDP of culture and creative industries exceeds that of the automotive sector

By Elaine Patricia Cruz*

In 2020, Brazil’s economy of culture and creative industries (ECIC) made R$230.14 billion, equivalent to 3.11% of Brazil’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The data was released today (10) by the Itaú Cultural Observatory, which developed a new methodology to measure the sector’s impacts based on microdata from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

With this, the economy of culture and creative industries surpassed other important sectors of the Brazilian economy, such as automotive, which accounted for 2.1% of the country’s wealth in 2020.

It also fell just below another important sector for the country’s economy, construction, which accounted for 4.06% of GDP in 2020.

“In addition to becoming more human with art and culture, we also develop this country from an economic point of view,” said Eduardo Saron, president of Fundação Itaú, the institution into which the Itaú Cultural Observatory is integrated.

“What we want to call attention to is the opportunity for growth and how this generates employment and income. When we offer this information about the GDP, it could be even higher if we could go beyond commodities.”

“Commodities are important, but we need more and better policies and society’s awareness about our sector as well. And these numbers bring this to the surface,” he added.

The cultural economy and creative industries sector encompasses segments such as fashion, craft activities, publishing industry, cinema, radio and TV, music, software development, digital games, information technology services dedicated to the creative field, architecture, advertising, and business services, design, performing arts, visual arts, museums, and heritage.

The first survey prepared by this Itaú Cultural Observatory showed that, in 2020, the sector employed more than 7.4 million workers and was home to more than 130,000 companies.

It was also responsible for 2.4% of the country’s net exports.

Another fact pointed out by the survey was that between 2012 and 2020, the GDP of the economy of culture and creative industries grew faster than the total wealth generation of the country.

In this period, the sector of creative segments advanced by 78%, while the country’s total economy rose by 55%.

“Creative cultures and industries are relevant and, I can say, essential to think about economic development strategies in the world,” said Leandro Valiati, a researcher who helped develop the new methodology for measuring the sector’s GDP.

“This economic sector is relevant, especially because of what the world experienced during the pandemic in terms of transformation in the ways of producing and consuming,” he said during a press conference this afternoon at the headquarters of Itaú Cultural in São Paulo.

“These numbers show the economic potential of these activities and the space that these activities have in the scope of public promotion in Brazil.”

“And in the scope of policies for the development of the sector, there is an imbalance, that is, there is a need to deepen these measures in a manner proportional to their importance for the GDP,” Valiati emphasized.

METHODOLOGY

The GDP of the economy of culture and creative industries of the Itaú Cultural Observatory was prepared based on the income criterion, which includes salary mass, profit mass, and other income earned by companies and individuals in the country.

To create this methodology, data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNADc/IBGE), the Social Information Report (RAIS), the Serialized Assessment Program (PAS), and the Annual Trade Survey (PAC) were used, in addition to IBGE’s Resource and Use Tables (TRU) for tax accounting and the history of accountability of the Rouanet Law.

The methodology was developed over a year and a half by a group of researchers led by Leandro Valiati, professor and researcher at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and the University of Manchester, UK.

The data for 2021 and 2022 have not yet been released because they are awaiting updates to the IBGE database.

*Editing by Aline Leal

With information from Agência Brasil