Brazil Economy | News & Updates

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A Brazilian-made Avibras ASTROS-II SS-30 multiple rocket systems on Tectran 6x6 AV-LMU trucks stand in firing position while being displayed as part of a demonstration of Saudi Arabian equipment.

Pasteur Institute on Paulista Avenue, in Downtown São Paulo.


Geographic distribution of Brazil's industrial output

Scientific production in Brazil went up several positions in the past 20 years.

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Brazil's Coup Government Is at War with Marginalized Groups

Demonstrators burn a poster with the images of President of the Brazilian Senate Renan Calheiros (L) and
Brazil's interim President Michel Temer in Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 12, 2016. | Photo: Reuters

The coup government does not seem to be concerned with the millions of Black, low-income, mestizo.

In a recent interview with The Intercept, ousted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said that the coup government of Michel Temer showed disregard for the country when he formed a cabinet entirely devoid of women or Black people.

“I think not having any woman or black people in the government shows a certain lack of care for the country you are governing," said Rousseff.

The Temer government, installed into power after the Congress voted to proceed with an impeachment trial, has been pegged as illegitimate by the supporters of the democratically elected president.

It appears that because the coup government does not seek to obtain legitimacy from the populace, it is seemingly unconcerned with the millions of Black, low-income, mestizo, Indigenous people in the country.

1. Temer Eliminates Ministry of Women, Racial Equality and Human Rights

On the 128th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Brazil, one of the world’s most ethnically diverse nations, the coup government eliminated the ministry of women, racial equality and human rights.

Ministries of Culture, Agrarian Development and Science and Technology were also eliminated, promoting a sharp backlash from all but his most ardent supporters such as the right-wing Free Brazil Movement.

2. Temer Appoints All-Male, All-White Cabinet

The coup government appointed an exclusively white and male cabinet. Since then, Temer has come under heavy criticism but his response has provoked an even greater backlash.

Temer said he would put his own wife, Marcela Temer, in charge of women’s programs in his government — but only if and when President Dilma Rousseff is officially impeached.

At least five women have rejected his request that they head the culture portfolio.

Temer also appointed a far-right, homophobic, creationist Evangelical pastor to his government.

3. Coup Government Pursues Racist Isolationism

Jose Serra, the new foreign minister under the interim president in Brazil, has requested a cost analysis of 17 embassies and diplomatic delegations opened since 2003 in the Caribbean and Africa with an eye toward closing them to save money.

Brazil is already isolated from its immediate neighbors, with eight Latin American countries rejecting the parliamentary coup that saw Rousseff ousted from power. Several of those countries have withdrawn their ambassadors in protest.

4. Coup Government Turns to Repression

The naming of Alexandre de Moraes as justice minister of Brazilian Senate-imposed President Michel Temer has raised fears that the coup will use repression to impose its neoliberal program on the country.

While serving as head of security for the state of Sao Paulo, Alexandre de Moraes oversaw several brutal crackdowns on social protest. He has called leftist demonstrators of being “hooligans” and engaging in behavior reminiscent of “guerrillas.”

Police have already used heavy-handed tactics against social movements that took to the streets to reject the coup.

5. Cuts to Social Programs will Hurt Black Brazilians Most

The coup government of Michel Temer has indicated it will make cuts to two landmark social programs, one that provided housing to low-income people and another that provided direct benefits to Brazil's poorest.

In a country like Brazil, where race and class are nearly indistinguishable, the weight of the coup government's reactionary policies will fall heaviest on the country's predominantly Black and low-income population.

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Brazil downgrades science ministry

Speed read

• Interim president merges science and telecom ministries
  
  
• Researchers fear telecom issues could overshadow their concerns
  
  
• Several Brazilian research institutes lobbied against the merger

Brazil’s interim president has alarmed researchers by merging the country’s science and telecommunication ministries.

Just a few hours after assuming power following a Senate vote on 12 May, Michel Temer announced the creation of the ministry of science,technology, innovations and communication. This means science has lost its independent seat in Brazil’s government, and researchers fear their concerns could be overshadowed by issues around telecommunications.

“The former [distinct] ministries had different areas of expertise and different evaluation criteria,” says Luiz Davidovich, the president of theBrazilian Academy of Sciences. “It will be hard to manage them as a set.”

Davidovich says that, in the past, science and technology were often banded together with industry and commerce. As this did not work well, Brazil created the ministry of science and technology in 1985, he tellsSciDev.Net.

“The sustainable future of a country is guaranteed ​

by science and technology, and Brazil
cannot stay behind.”​

Luiz Davidovich, Brazilian Academy
of Sciences

​

Until this month, the science ministry was the prime coordinator of science in the country, overseeing around 20 research institutes devoted to areas as diverse as mathematics, space science and Amazon research.

Brazil’s sudden leadership change came after the Senate voted to impeach president Dilma Rousseff. She is accused of trying to hide irregularities in the financial reporting of state oil company Petrobas. But critics say the move is a power grab by the country’s wealthy elite.

As Brazil slips deeper into a political crisis following the impeachment, the country’s researchers fear funding cuts.

“Other countries raise their investments in science and technology during crises,” says Davidovich. “The sustainable future of a country is guaranteed by science and technology, and Brazil cannot stay behind.”

The new ministry is led by Gilberto Kassab, a former city mayor of Sao Paulo and minister of cities in the previous government.



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After being warned of the looming restructure, 14 Brazilian research institutes teamed up to convince the government to protect science. On 12 May, just before Temer came to power, the institutions, including the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science, sent Temer — then vice-president — a manifesto highlighting the importance of having an independent science ministry.

“The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation is the engine of national development,” they said in their statement.


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Map of automobile factories in Brazil

 

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Sao Paulo state is the undisputed center of Brazil's industrial and scientific sectors.

Brazil today produces over 3.5 million vehicles a year.

VW plant in Sao Paulo producing the Gol, Brazil's best selling car:

historical picture showing Volkswagen Gol generation I production in the early 80s

Bombardier Monorail factory in Sao Paulo

Sao Paulo state is also the home of Embraer, the world's 3rd largest manufacturer of airplanes

Jetfighter AMX:

Military cargo airplane KC390

 

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BRASKEM headquartered in Sao Paulo is the world's 4th largest chemicals manufacturer

DELL manufactures notebooks in Sao Paulo (Hortolândia) and Rio Grande do Sul state

AMSTAD-MAXXION locomotive factory

MARCOPOLO (Rio Grande do Sul) is one of the world's largest manufacturers of buses

WEG in Santa Catarina is one of the world's largest manufacturers of electric motors

 

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in Sao Paulo state, Tecsis is one of the world's largest producers of blades for wind power generating units

Shipbuilding today is concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco states

Oil platforms are also produced in Brazil, most of Brazil's oil comes from offshore wells

 

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ZONA FRANCA DE MANAUS - Free Zone of Manaus. Established in the 1970s to develop the Amazon, the Free Zone is an industrial area of Manaus city (pop 2 million) where the manufacture and assembly of industrial consumer products (electronics, white line, motorcycles and light commercial vehicles) can be done with little or no taxation. From the 60s until the early 90's, consumer products could not be directly imported to Brazil, so most consumer electronics in the country were manufactured/ assembled in Manaus and than shipped to other regions.

SPACE PROGRAM

Brazilian suborbital sounding rockets. Brazil's first suborbital launches took place in the 1970's.

The orbital program has failed to orbit the VLS vehicle in two attempts.

The failed launch attempt of VLS 2


Currently the Brazilian-Ukrainian joint venture Alcantara-Cyclone is posed to launch an orbital vehicle from Northeastern Brazil before 2016. (CANCELLED due to meltdown in Ukraine and problems in Brazil)

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Brazil’s Financial Chief Says Economy Worse Off Than He Imagined

Brazil’s Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles said the economy is in worse shape than he anticipated when joining the government one week ago.

"In the numbers I see a worse situation than I expected," he said in an interview in Brasilia, referring in large part to the federal budget.

Yet the current administration led by Michel Temer is in a better position to win approval of economic measures in Congress than his predecessor, Meirelles said, adding that Brazilians are now more aware that sacrifices must be made before growth can return. "The government changed, as did the willingness of Congress and the capacity of the very government," he said.

Meirelles, 70, has said repeatedly that shoring up fiscal accounts and capping the growth of public debt is a top priority to rebuild confidence in the recession-battered economy. His economic team is developing a proposal to reduce pension payouts, and a government official said earlier this week the administration may sell state assets to raise money.


Temer’s cabinet also is trying to renegotiate state debt before the Supreme Court reaches a decision on how local governments should pay interest to the federal administration. A pending court ruling to allow states to pay simple rather than compound interest rates would deprive the federal government of an estimated 402 billion reais ($113 billion), according to some estimates.

Temer took the country’s reins last week after the Senate temporarily removed Dilma Rousseff from office to face an impeachment trial. He asked Meirelles, a former central bank president renowned for taming inflation, to put back on track an economy that lost its investment-grade status last year amid a near-record budget deficit.

Meirelles’s team will unveil its 2016 budget goal on Monday, which is expected to show it posting a deficit before payments on interest, rather than a surplus as targeted by the previous administration. Senator Cassio Cunha Lima, a government ally, said Thursday the so-called primary deficit is around 200 billion reais. The administration bets lawmakers will act quickly on its proposals if they understand the true extent of the budget gap.

"Without a doubt, people are expecting results," said Meirelles.

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Brazil’s Stocks Fall as Fed Concern Adds to Local Economic Woes

Brazil’s Ibovespa joined a global rout Thursday as material producers including miner Vale SA and oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA slumped on concern that the Federal Reserve may start raising interest rates as soon as next month, prompting investors to pare bets in riskier markets.

Brazil’s benchmark equity gauge fell for a fifth straight day. Petrobras, as Petroleo Brasileiro is known, contributed the most to the index’s drop, and Vale declined to the lowest price since April 7. Usinas Siderurgicas de Minas Gerais SA fell the most among steelmakers in the Western Hemisphere as iron ore dropped to a two-month low. Commodity producers account for 21 percent of the Ibovespa’s weighting.

The flight-to-quality move was rekindled Wednesday after minutes from the Fed’s April meeting indicated policy makers are willing to increase rates in June if the economy continues to improve. Those news are negative especially for Brazil, where a new government took office last week with the job of shoring up the country’s finances and fighting a recession.

"The global risk aversion gets a boost in Brazil because there are still a lot of uncertainties regarding the prospects for the country’s economy," Paulo Henrique Amantea, an analyst at brokerage Guide Investimentos, said from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. "It’s not time to build more positions in Brazilian stocks. It’s time to wait to see what kind of progress the new administration will be able to make."

The Ibovespa fell 0.8 percent to a six-week low of 50,132.53 at the close of trading in Sao Paulo as 39 of its 59 stocks declined. Petrobras lost 3.9 percent. Usiminas, as Usinas Siderurgicas is known, slumped 7.4 percent, and Vale, the world’s biggest iron-ore producer, dropped 1 percent. The material fell 5.8 percent to $53.47 a metric ton.

After appointing bank executives Henrique Meirelles as Finance Minister and Ilan Goldfajn as the central bank head, acting President Michel Temer is expected to announce measures to combat the worst recession in a century. Latin America’s biggest economy is forecast to contract 3.88 percent this year after shrinking 3.8 percent in 2015.


Source : Bloomberg


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Brazil Minister of Tourism Defends Proposal to Legalize Gambling

Minister of tourism believes that legalizing gambling in Brazil will provide revenue and jobs for the country.


RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The minister of tourism in Brazil, Henrique Eduardo Alves, once again defended a proposal to legalize gambling in the country, at the opening of the tourism fair, Destination Brazil Travel Mart, yesterday (May 18th). Presently, gambling is prohibited in Brazil, but Alves cited the legalization of gambling as one of the priorities on his agenda.

Brazil’s minister of tourism, Henrique Eduardo
Alves, defends the proposal to legalize
gambling, photo by Fabio
Rodrigues Pozzebom/Agência Brasil.



Alves led the Ministry of Tourism between April 2015 until March 28, 2016, when he left office after his party, the PMDB decided to leave the coalition with the then-President Dilma Rousseff-lead PT (Workers’ Party) and give up all the positions it held in the federal government.


With Rousseff’s departure for up to 180 days to defend her possible impeachment, Alves returned to his former position last week. During his first stint in the job, Alves had advocated the legalization of gambling, and had also drafted a bill based on legalized gambling legislation in countries such as England, Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Uruguay.


Alves defended his proposal saying, “We must have the courage to face in a serious, professional and republican way the legalization of gambling. Currently, people play clandestinely, without generating any revenue for the country.”


Although the minister and some lawmakers are pushing the legislation, the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) is against the initiative. During a hearing in March, Secretary of Institutional Relations, Peterson de Paula, concluded that there is not enough evidence or comparative studies to prove that monetizing and regulating casinos and bingo parlors guarantees a positive impact on revenue as enjoyed by other countries.


De Paula added that “previous experience shows that gambling is generally exploited by groups linked to money laundering for tax evasion and corruption.”


Source : Riotimesonline

 

[South-Striker]

Brazil is nice, I know Rio de Janeiro and Buzios, recommend