NEWS FROM BRAZIL
Brazil Weekly
Brazil Politics & Government News
In Brazil on May 27, 2011 at 12:19 pm
POLITICS
President Dilma Rousseff has suspended the distribution and production of sex education films for schools in Brazil. President Rousseff believes the footage is not suitable for youngsters (BBC).
Brazil’s congress has passed a law that — if approved by President Dilma Rousseff — would require sexual health messages to be placed in underwear manufactured and sold in Brazil (MercoPress).
President Dilma Rousseff’s coalition won a victory when it blocked opposition attempts to summon her chief of staff to testify in Congress about his previous income while serving in Congress (Reuters).
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INTERNATIONAL
Brazil should invest in studying China, India and South Africa, according to experts who joined a public hearing on foreign policy of the three countries promoted by the Committee on External Relations and National Defense. The hearing is part of a debate cycle named Trends of Brazilian Foreign Policy (2011-2012) (Federal Senate).
Senators approved the nomination of Ambassador Carlos Alberto Lopes Asfora to the embassy in Tbilisi in Georgia. He highlighted at the committee the “many opportunities” that can be seized by Brazil in relation to Georgia, a European country that was part of the old Soviet Union (Federal Senate).
Brazil will privately support French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde’s candidacy to run the International Monetary Fund, a Brazilian government official familiar with the negotiations said (Bloomberg).
DEFENSE & SECURITY
A research-and-development center for transport, logistics, defense and security was inaugurated in Brazil this week by Saab of Sweden (UPI).
SPLIT SECOND POLLS
Which countries should be Brazil's most important and strategic international partners?
Which world city will have the best chance of hosting a cluster of Brazilian companies?
Brazil Business & Economy
In Brazil on May 27, 2011 at 12:18 pm
ECONOMY
New research released this month adds weight to the reports that Brazil’s economic growth is largely being fueled by credit markets. The research by APAS (Paulista Association of Supermarkets) shows that 53 percent of all Brazilian families are spending more than they earn. Similar research by the Household Budget Survey (conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) revealed that 75 percent of Brazilian households find it difficult to pay their bills and don’t have enough money to reach the end of the month (The Rio Times).
Is Brazil importing the wrong sort of money? Read the column by Stephanie Flanders, Economics Editor at the BBC.
Brazil’s foreign debt rating outlook was boosted to positive by Standard & Poor’s, which cited strengthening prospects for long-term economic growth (Bloomberg Businessweek).
Once a country associated with the slums known as favelas, Brazil is on its way to becoming a new engine of growth for the luxury industry, executives at the Reuters Luxury and Fashion Summit said this week.
Brazil’s unemployment rate edged down to 6.4 percent in April from 6.5 percent in March, the latest sign of a tight labor market that is pressuring inflation in Latin America’s largest economy (Reuters).
AGRI ETC
While many welcome the investments, the aggressive push comes as Brazilian officials have begun questioning the “strategic partnership” with China encouraged by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The Chinese have become so important to Brazil’s economy that it cannot do without them — and that is precisely what is making Brazil increasingly uneasy (New York Times).
The Brazilian government plans to offer a line of subsidized credit to sugar and ethanol mills for the replanting of cane crops, as part of a larger push to stimulate production of the biofuel, agriculture minister Wagner Rossi told a local newspaper (Reuters).
President Dilma Rousseff ordered a team of ministers to look into ways of reducing volatility in ethanol prices, including the possibility of government intervention in the market, the Financial Times reported, citing Energy Minister Edison Lobao (Bloomberg).
AVIATION
Embraer, the world’s biggest regional aircraft maker, will take more than one year to decide whether to build a new family of jets, Chief Executive Officer Frederico Curado told newspaper Valor Economico (Reuters).
US Airways acquires 42 slot pairs at Washington’s Reagan National from Delta as well as rights to operate additional daily service to Sao Paulo in 2015 (Reuters).
Air France Flight 447’s flight recordings show the aircraft slowed to a stall after its airspeed sensors failed while the two co-pilots were at the controls, two people with knowledge of the investigation said (Reuters).
BANKING
Bank of America Corp. is expanding in Brazil with a new commercial banking license that will allow it to take deposits and offer cash-management services to corporate clients in the country (MercoPress).
Brazil will see more acquisitions in its banking system after demand for purchasing credit portfolios from mid-size banks dried up, said central bank director Anthero Meirelles (Bloomberg).
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CONSTRUCTION
Odebrecht International earned the European High Speed Rail Deal of the Year 2010 Award for the contract to construct the Lisbon-Madrid High Speed Train. Located between Poceirão, along the South margin of the Tejo River in the metropolitan region of Lisbon, and Caia, at the border with Spain, the contract corresponds to the concession of the high speed train’s first stretch, which extends 167 km (Odebrecht).
Three members of the consortium that will build Brazil’s Belo Monte dam in the Amazon are pulling out, unhappy with the growing state control of the project, the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo reported (Reuters).
MINING & STEEL
The world’s largest ore carrier, Vale Brasil, was loaded for the first time on May 24 at Pier I at Ponta da Madeira Port Terminal (TPPM) in São Luís, Maranhão. The ship, which was loaded with 391,000 tons of iron ore, will now sail for Asia (Vale).
Brazilian steelmaker CSN said it would buy the cement and steel assets of Spain’s Grupo Alfonso Gallardo in a deal valued at 946 million euros ($1.35 billion), as it moves forward with a plan to grow overseas (Reuters).
OIL
Brazil’s offshore Libra oilfield likely holds about 5 billion barrels, the director of the National Petroleum Agency said, much less than the 8 billion it had previously estimated (Reuters).
Concerns of mounting political interference at Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras are spurring interest in a crop of start-ups seeking to tap the South American nation’s sizable reserves (Reuters).
Petrobras must triple the number of ships and deepwater drilling rigs it uses in order to double its oil and gas production by 2020, its top executive said (Reuters).
POWER
Brazil which gets about 80% of its energy from hydroelectricity is considering a record investment of 4.1 billion Real (2.5 billion USD) for wind farms this year to diversify its power supply (MercoPress).
Fundo de Desenvolvimento do Nordeste, a government fund that investments in development projects in northeast Brazil, will shift its focus from railways to wind farms to meet the region’s growing power needs (Bloomberg).
Brazil Culture & Regional News
In Brazil on May 27, 2011 at 12:17 pm
PROJECT OF THE WEEK
Render of a villa at Reserva Real, Jaboticatubas, in the Belo Horizonte metropolitan aera (Skyscrapercity).
ART
Strong demand for Brazilian abstract art and works by Colombia’s Fernando Botero propelled Sotheby’s to its best-selling auction of Latin American art with more than $21.6 million in sales (Reuters).
WORLD CUP
Indecision on where and how to build venues have reduced the time left for construction work, significantly increasing the amount needed to be spent in nearly all of the 12 cities hosting World Cup matches three years from now (AP).
AMAZON
Brazil’s lower house of Congress overwhelmingly approved revisions to a key environmental law that would open up land in the Amazon rain forest for agriculture and grant amnesty to producers who deforested protected areas. The Senate still must vote on the measure, which conservationists say could accelerate the pace of deforestation (New York Times).
A prominent Brazilian conservationist and his wife have been killed in the Amazon region, police have said. They said Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo were ambushed in Para state, near the city of Maraba (BBC).
Amazonian tribe has no abstract concept of time, say researchers. The Amondawa lacks the linguistic structures that relate time and space – as in our idea of, for example, “working through the night” (MercoPress).
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SPLIT SECOND POLL
RIO
The Rio police carried out anti-drug trafficking operations last weekend in the favelas Mangueira and Tuiuti in the Zona Norte (North zone) of Rio de Janeiro. The police operations left one person dead, two wounded, and six arrested. Mangueira, a community made famous by the renowned Samba School, may now be in line for a Pacification Police Unit (UPP) soon (The Rio Times).
The current positive economic climate in Brazil has motivated the city of Rio and the Association of Professional Investment Analysts of the Capital Markets (APIMEC) to organize a high profile business event, called Rio Investors Day. The event is being held May 30 – 31st at the Copacabana Palace Hotel, with 42 publicly traded Brazilian companies and more then 400 institutional investors and government representatives (The Rio Times).
Surrounded by Botafogo, Lagoa and Jardim Botânico, Humaitá is a small, residential neighborhood full of charm. Roughly just one square kilometer in size, it is one of the few neighborhoods in the Zona Sul (South zone) that still possess riveting colonial architecture. Also, from the main road, Rua Humaitá, it is hard to miss the stunning, immediate view of Corcovado and Christ the Redeemer (The Rio Times).
The city of Rio de Janeiro is seeking to raise 3.5 billion reais ($2 billion) for a real estate fund to renovate its downtown port area ahead of the 2016 Summer Olympics (Bloomberg).
The Board of Directors of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) has approved support for three Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica) reforestation projects in the amount of R$ 11.8 million (BNDES).
SAO LUIS
Ponta da Madeira Port Terminal (TPPM) in São Luís will become the country’s leading port in terms of cargo handling capacity and volume in 2012. Besides handling more iron ore, Ponta da Madeira will become an important transport hub for soy and corn produced in the Northeast (mainly Maranhão and Piauí), North (Tocantins) and Center-West regions, using a new route provided by the North-South Railroad (FNS), operated by Vale and interconnected with the Carajás Railroad (EFC) (Vale).
SAO PAULO
Brazilian riot police have fired tear gas to break up a protest in support of the legalization of marijuana in South America’s biggest city. Six people were detained. A court ruled the Marijuana March in Sao Paulo was illegal. About 1,000 people still showed up for the rally Saturday in the city’s financial heart, saying the march was for freedom of expression and not pro-marijuana (Washington Post).
