Digitalization could boost Brazilian GDP by US$190 billion, says FGV study

If Brazil invested in the digitalization of processes, it would be possible to inject more than R$1 trillion (US$190 billion) into the country’s GDP.

A survey conducted by the Brasil Competitivo movement in partnership with the Getúlio Vargas Foundation compared the economy of the United States.

In the last five years, the Brazilian digital supply has grown an average of 5.7%, while the United States has grown by 7.1%.

If Brazil were to expand its supply at American levels, digitalization would be able to generate an increase of R$422 billion. In the most challenging scenario, the increase could reach R$1.12 trillion.

According to the executive director of the MBC, Tatiana Ribeiro, the biggest obstacle is in education.

“We need to make somehow people advance in digital literacy so that children and even older people can use technology to the maximum. And we also need to understand that we need to train professionals in these areas.”

“Today, we have a big labor shortage. If we really needed to think of a single action today, it would be labor training in this area. So, we really need to advance a lot in the education agenda.”

“We need infrastructure, we need to advance in cybersecurity, we need to support and increase the vision of small businesses to use technology,” says

Tatiana Ribeiro, who is part of the Brasil Competitivo movement, points out that the pandemic has increased the digital supply, but there is still a great deal of unexplored potential.

“Micro and small companies, many of them stayed alive in the pandemic because they started using digital channels to sell their products, for example.”

When we evaluate the economy as a whole, the maturity, we see that it is still very little explored, and we use very little of the potential that this tends to add.

Instead of just making a product available digitally, it is possible to take digitalization into the production process to increase efficiency.”

“We still need to advance a lot in the maturity of this digitalization for the entire economy,” he argues.

Digital jobs have grown by almost 5% in the last five years. Digital jobs still have higher-than-average salaries and higher productivity than other activities.

According to the study, the data shows resilience in the face of crises.

With information from reporter Nanny Cox

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