THE leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the BRIC countries, are  starting today a two-day summit meeting in the Brazilian capital, Brasília. That´s the second time the four developing-market giants hold a summit. The first was in Russia last year. Economic and financial issues Discussions are expected to be held on  the need for changes in global institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and on updating the regulation of financial markets to avoid another global crisis. In Yekaterinburg, 2009, they discussed the possibility of creating a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar.  President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is the host of the meeting attended by Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

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The heads of state of Brazil, Rússia, India and China will meet again on April 16^th, in Brasília, the Brazilian capital. They first met in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg last year to discuss the international financial crisis. The agenda for the April summit is still being discussed. The meeting comes as Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, tries to take a more prominent role on the world stage. It has become an important member of the G20 group of nations – now a key forum for global economic and financial discussions. The BRIC group summit will be preceded on April 15th by a meeting of heads of states from Brazil, India and South Africa, also in Brasilia.

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Brazil’s Vice President Jose Alencar made big headlines late last month when he stated that Brazil should have the right to have nuclear weapons, which he said would give his country a greater “dissuasive” power and more “respectability” in world affairs. In 2007, Gen. Jose Benedito de Barros Moreira, Defense Ministry undersecretary for strategic affairs and international relations, made similar statements.

Under a 1967 regional agreement known as the Treaty of Tlatelolco, several Latin American countries agreed to abstain from developing nuclear weapons. Since then, 33 countries in the region have ratified the treaty, turning Latin America into the world’s biggest nuclear weapons-free area.

Alencar cited the case of other emerging regional powers, such as Pakistan, which he said has won international relevance “precisely because it has a nuclear bomb.” A spokesman for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva immediately clarified that the vice president, much like the general before him, was speaking for himself and did not represent the government’s views.

`A MISTAKE’

Last week, I interviewed Brazil Defense Minister Nelson Jobim, and asked him whether his country is planning to build nuclear weapons.

“No, it was a mistake on the part of the vice president,” Jobim said. “There are two reasons why it’s prohibited for Brazil to develop nuclear weapons: The Brazilian Constitution bans the use and production of nuclear weapons and international agreements signed by Brazil prohibit it as well.”

He added that Brazil will develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, which is allowed under international treaties. That will include construction of a nuclear-fueled submarine that will be faster than conventional submarines, but that will have no nuclear weapons, he said. Asked about Gen. Barros Moreira’s 2007 statements, the defense minister said, “The general you are talking about was also speaking for himself.”

I asked several academics which Brazilian officials we should believe.

Cristina Eguizabal, director of Florida International University’s Latin American and Caribbean Center, said she believes that the defense minister speaks for the government and for Brazil’s political establishment.

“Brazil’s foreign policy project is one of becoming a respected regional power, but not an anti-systemic pariah power,” she said. “Developing nuclear weapons would put it alongside `undesirable’ states, such as Iran or North Korea.”

Jose Azel, a senior research associate at the University of Miami, said that Brazil’s top foreign policy priority is to obtain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. “Perhaps this talk about developing nuclear weapons is a way of creating some political buzz to obtain that position,” he said.

VENEZUELA AND IRAN

Others believe that Brazil is getting nervous because of the growing nuclear ties between Venezuela and Iran. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez signed a nuclear cooperation deal with Iran in November 2008, and Venezuela’s mining minister, Rodolfo Sanz, stated recently that Iran is helping explore Venezuela’s uranium reserves.

While Chávez said that such programs are “only for peaceful purposes,” Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was skeptical of such claims.

“We are very worried, and I can’t refrain from saying so, that nuclear war be brought to our neighborhood,” Uribe was quoted as saying by the Agence France-Presse on Sept. 26. “This is very serious, very worrying.”

My opinion: Brazil is on a roll these days and closer than ever to achieving its goal of becoming a regional superpower. Last week, it obtained a two-year temporary seat on the U.N. Security Council, shortly after getting the 2014 soccer World Cup and beating the United States to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

In addition, Brazil’s economy is scheduled to grow faster, and the country has recently found huge oil reserves, leading Lula to forecast that Brazil will be the world’s fifth largest economy in 10 years.

Most likely, Brazil will only develop a nuclear program for peaceful purposes because it will want to remain a good global citizen. But that will largely depend on what Venezuela does: If the Venezuela-Iran nuclear collaboration is not transparent — and creates as much international suspicion as Iran’s semi-secret nuclear program — Brazil may change its mind, and Latin America could soon cease to be the world’s most populous nuclear-free area.

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Brazil’s official statement, pronounced in the gathering of finance ministers and CB presidents from the world’s 20 top economies in London, defended that emerging nations should play a significantly larger role in economic decisions, “to reflect the changes in the world economy”.

Before the meeting started, Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China)  proposed an agreement in which developed nations would give 7% of their share in IMF and 6% of the share they have of the World Bank. Once this was accepted, developing nations would together detain half of the global amount of shares.

Currently, rich countries have 60% of vote both in IMF and in the World Bank. The battle for vote power is the main topic on Brazil’s agenda for the third G-20 meeting in only ten months.

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Among these measures is My House, My Life – a government habitation program dedicated to funding houses in small installments for the poor. While lifting millions of Brazilians out of poverty, campaigns like these promote a bigger dynamism in the sectors it embraces.

Besides, the government cut income taxes and levies on key consumer goods, such as automobiles and whirlpools, helping manufacturers boost sales and avoid layoffs. The article also emphasized the recent high on confidence levels among Brazilians and the potential our 190-million-people consumer market has.

And, in spite of Brazil’s outdated bureaucracy and transport, it is clear we are changing. The country’s improving prospects create huge opportunities for entrepreneurs small and large.

Click here to see the full article.

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The research heard more than 240 multinationals. From these, 50% plan to invest more in 2011 than they have invested in 2008 – between the Asian companies, the number rose to 57% and, between Americans, it achieved 71%.

The result indicates that the process of internationalization will be resumed, yet in a slower and different format where there will be a higher preference for the emerging countries. According to Unctad, the economic crisis gave fresh impetus to this trend. Rich countries will still attract investments, but the role developing countries have will rise in the multinationals’ strategies.

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Foreign investors have both eyes on Brazil’s promising market

The great potential of the Brazilian consumer market has become a major target for foreign investment. Between this year’s January and May, foreigners have invested more than US$ 11.2 billion in industry, commerce, agriculture and service in general – the second biggest investment amount of the decade.

In interview to the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, the president of the Brazilian Society for Transnational Companies and Economic Globalization (Sobeet), Luís Afonso Lima, highlighted that the quantity of resources in this year’s first five months was the same as the total volume that entered the country during the first five months of 1999, when a series of  privatizations attracted great amounts of foreign capital.

According to a research conducted by the  Brazilian Central Bank, the perspective for 2009 is that IED (Direct Foreign Investments) reach US$ 25 billion, still below 2008′s US$ 45 billion record. However, if the perspective for this year is confirmed, the amount of foreign investment will be the 6^th ever measured by CB, since 1947.

In the beginning of the year, there was a strategic cut on foreign investment. Multinational companies had to send capital to their headquarters, which were in a tough situation due to the economic crisis. Now that phase is over, and companies have resumed their investments in Brazil with both eyes on its consumer market. “Multinationals are looking for long-term, for profitability is getting smaller in developed markets”, states Lima.

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Flags of the G-8 countries: to Brazil, the forum shouldn't matter this much

After receiving a death sentence from Brazil’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Celso Amorim, G-8 – group of the seven richest countries and Russia – is now being threatened with a proposal of a “smooth and elegant” disassemble by the Brazilian government, in this week’s G-8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will suggest the G-8 attributes be passed on to G-20, a group which involves both emerging and developed economies. Lula is going to participate in the meeting as a member of G-5 (South Africa, Brazil, India and Mexico).

“If their leaders [of G-8 countries] want to keep it [G-8], let them keep it. But to discuss economical and financial issues of the world, I think G-20 is the ideal forum”, said Lula Saturday in Paris, where he passed the weekend gathered with his family and advisors.

Aware that his theses might meet resistance with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and other European leaders, Lula is searching for a previous association with his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy. They will meet in the Élysée Palace tomorrow, when Brazilian and French newspapers will also publish an article written by both presidents defending the urgency of changes in global forums and organisms.

“Brazil and France believe G-20 has become a privileged body in a moment when we march to a multipolar world”, stated the Brazilian special advisor for Foreign Affairs, Marco Aurélio Garcia. “To some extent, G-8 has weakened because of G-20’s emergence.”

And his opinion might be supported by G-5 countries. Some members of this forum – Brazil, Russia, India and China - gathered less than a month ago in Russia for the first BRIC summit. According to Garcia, despite some “different shades”, it was possible to achieve a common ground about a new world order. Especially when it comes to G-20 being a higher instance of decision than G-8.

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Launched two weeks ago, a 104-unit residential project directed at middle-income families in Sao Paulo’s Vila Carrao area is the best example of that, Thomas Shapiro, president of GoldenTree InSite Partners, said at the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit. “We sold every unit in four hours,” Shapiro said, adding that the company has recently raised around $500 million to invest there.

When crises arrive, Brazilians traditionally prefer to invest in hard assets

Brazil has kept a low profile internationally in the past few months, he added. That was good for his company to identify good investment opportunities, as local listed real estate companies like Cyrella and Gafisa were suffering with the stock market debacle.

Shapiro said the fundamentals of the Brazilian economy looked better than expected for the year ahead and a stimulus package from the government has helped the real estate market heat up.

He also stated that the upper class in Brazil traditionally prefers to invest in hard assets when crises arrive, but discarded signs of a real estate bubble forming in the South American country, like the one that hit countries like the U.S. and Spain.

High demand in Sao Paulo

Due to a lack of available buildings, it is getting harder to find an apartment or a house to rent in Sao Paulo. In many areas of the city, the number of people searching for a home has more than doubled in some real estate agencies. For low-priced buildings, the waiting time can last four months.

The most sought properties of Sao Paulo have one and two bedrooms, with monthly rent between 1,000 and 1,600 reais – but the increasing demand makes rent prices constantly higher. According a research of the Habitation Syndicate of Sao Paulo (Secovi-SP), rent prices in the city rose around 11,1% between last June and this year’s May.

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