By Bruno De Nicola, Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazil’s economy seems to be back on track, according to the latest report from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica (Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute), the GDP increased by 1.9% against the last trimester, while a Manpower survey shows positive signs for Brazilian workers. According to the staffing and recruiting company, the South American country stands second in the employment expectation world ranking.
The recent peak gives hope and proves that Brazil is no longer in a condition of technical recession, which is officially declared when a country’s GDP drops for two trimesters in a row. Last trimester marked a one percent drawback, and before that, in 2008’s fourth trimester, the index dropped by 3.4 percent.
The GDP is the sum of wealth produced by a country. The index is usually determined by three sectors of a country’s economy: industry, farming and services. However it may also be surmised through consumption and in Brazil’s case it counts individual consumption, government consumption, public and private investments and exports.
Family purchases grew by 2.1 percent in comparison to the first trimester, which proves that, in spite of the crisis, Brazilian consumer confidence is on the rise.
Government consumption marked a slight 0.1 percent drawback against the first trimester. However, in comparison to the same period in 2008, federal consumption increased by 2.2 percent. Investments, which dropped by seventeen percent since 2008, remain stable and marked no variation against the first trimester.
Exports in the second trimester increased quite relevantly, especially since China started to purchase great quantities of oil and soybeans from Brazil. The variation of the balance of trade against the first trimester of 2009 reached 23.3 percent.
Brazil’s positive moment reflects also on the employment market, which has been growing in the country since March. The unemployment rate has gone from nine to eight percent over the past six months and should lower quite rapidly now that Brazil is officially out of a technical recession.
Proof of the great employment potential of this country comes also from Manpower’s latest survey on employment expectation. Brazilian businesspeople have the most positive employment expectation in Latin America, and rank second in the world, with India ranking as the number-one nation.
According to the survey, which resulted from 72,000 interviews with businesspeople from all over the world, the Brazilian index for job expectation is around 21 percent. The rate comes from the subtraction of the businesspeople who believe there will be an employment increase (around thirty percent) and those who believe the unemployment rate is set to rise (around nine percent).
After Brazil, in the South American continent, follows Columbia, with an index around thirteen percent, then comes Perù (nine percent), Costa Rica (six percent) and Argentina with three percent.
North American countries, apart from Canada (five percent), registered a negative result. Employment expectation in the US is around negative three percent, while in Mexico, it is around negative five percent.
A general overview of the matter shows that, 17 of the 35 analyzed countries believe in an increase in the job market, while 15 foresee a drop in the number of hiring. India leads the world ranking with a 34 percent employment expectation.
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