Chinese companies have shown interest in several sectors

Chinese companies are preparing to invest in agri-business in Brazil, according to a report published Wednesday in Brazilian daily newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo.

The daily said that in April the China National Agricultural Development Group Corporation said it intended to buy land to produce soy and maize. In their initial contacts, the company’s negotiators showed interest in land in Central-West Brazil, particularly in the state of Goiás.

At the same time, representatives of the Chongqing Grain Group announced they planned to apply US$300 million in the acquisition of 100,000 hectares of land in the west of the state of Bahia, to produce soy for the Brazilian and Chinese markets.

A month later, Grupo Pallas International, made up of private investors as well as being part state-owned, revealed plans to buy between 200,000 and 250,000 hectares in the west of Bahia and possibly in the bush areas of Maranhão, Piauí and Tocantins, jointly known as Mapito.

Chinese companies have shown interest in several sectors, such as steel production, oil exploration, power distribution, mining and construction of the bullet train between Campinas, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Official estimates point to China investing up to US$12 billion in Brazil this year making it the biggest foreign direct investor in the country.

This influx of investment denotes a radical change in the way Chinese companies are approaching the Brazilian market as last year they invested just US$82 million and US$213 million between 2001 and 2009, according to figures from Brazil’s central bank.

With the economic recovery, Brazil has come out of the crisis stronger

Latin American stocks rose on Wednesday, boosted by solid earnings in Brazil, but a downbeat reading of the U.S. economy by the Federal Reserve cut into gains and spurred losses in Mexico and Chile.In Brazil the strong rates of economic growth have spurred optimism on second-quarter earnings, which are just getting under way.

“With the economic recovery, Brazil has come out of the crisis stronger. Brazilian companies are going to start showing those results now,” said Alvaro Bandeira, director with Agora brokerage in Sao Paulo.Brazil’s Bovespa index .BVSP gained 0.2 percent, led by a 4.51 percent jump in shares of bank Bradesco after its profits beat estimates, helped by growing credit demand and reduced delinquencies.

“We believe that Bradesco, given its extensive presence, is well positioned to benefit from the growth outlook we expect for the sector as a whole in 2010,” said Laura Schuch, a bank analyst at the Ativa brokerage in Rio de Janeiro.

Shares of mining giant Vale (VALE5.SA), the world’s largest producer of iron ore, added 1.31 percent before its earnings report on Thursday where net income at the company likely soared nearly five-fold.

Wireless operator Vivo (VIVO4.SA) jumped 3.95 percent after Portugal Telecom’s board approved the sale of its stake in the Brazilian company to Telefonica (TEF.MC). Vivo also posted better-than-expected second-quarter net income.
(Reuters)

"We will invest in the country what was not invested in 30 years"

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on the weekend that the country’s airports will be ready to answer the demand of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

The Brazilian president, who met with South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria, said that any worries about Brazil’s infrastructure for the 2014 World Cup are unwarranted.”I think it is inopportune to be worried about the Brazilian infrastructure for the 2014 Cup,” he said. “Thanks to the Growth Acceleration Project (PAC), Brazil will invest some 624 million U. S. dollars. We will invest in the country what was not invested in 30 years.”

President Lula admitted that the transports infrastructure in Brazil needs improving, but assured that everything will be ready by the beginning of the tournament. According to him, the Cup will make people see Brazil with better eyes.

More than one million jobs were created in Brazil last year

According to an article published on Herald staff journal, Brazil is one of the big boys now and its self-dependent economy is a powerhouse, not only regionally but globally, there’s no disputing that. Ever since former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso privatised companies such as Telebras between 1995 and 2002, he was laying valuable groundwork for current left-wing President Luiz Inácio da Silva who picked up where Cardoso left off so that Brazil could continue to develop its infrastructure and economy.

Deceptively self-reliant, just 10 percent of Brazil’s GDP comes from exports, and not just from commodities. More than one million jobs were created in Brazil last year, although a mere 0.2 percent of those were in the mining sector which is the country’s largest commodity-export sector.

And confidence is contagious. Speaking from Johannesburg on Wednesday, Brazil’s Tourism Minister Luiz Barretto Filho said: “We are on our way to being the world’s fifth-largest economy,” adding that the country is expecting around 500 million foreign tourists in 2014 when it hosts the World Cup.

“We hope to get between four percent and 4.5 percent of GDP (by 2014),” said Barretto Filho, referring to the World Cup. Ambitious? Perhaps, but what’s wrong with aiming high when your stock exchange is Latin America’s most important and the world’s third-largest, plus your national football side was 5/1 on to bring back the World Cup for a sixth time yesterday? (Incidentally, Argentina is 7/1 on, according to UK online gambling website Betfair, which provided both odds.)

In fact, Brazil, which saw 17.4 percent year-on-year industrial production growth in April 2010, has been in the economic limelight for some time. Nine years ago, the investment bank Goldman Sachs suggested Brazil’s economy, combined with those of Russia, India and China, could outperform the world’s current richest nations by 2050. This 2001 report referred to these four developing nations as BRICs, and although this informal group has never got so far as proposing free trade agreements as per Mercosur or the European Union, there is a definite feeling of a private members’ club between the four, which led to their first official summit in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

Just this month, Goldman Sachs, which coined the BRICs acronym, released an updated report which confirmed not only BRICs’ importance in the global economy but also Brazil’s. “The last decade saw the BRICs make their mark on the global economic landscape. Over the past 10 years they have contributed over a third of world GDP growth, 36.3 percent, and grown from one-sixth of the world economy to almost a quarter (in purchasing power parity — PPP — terms). Looking forward to the coming decade, we expect this trend to continue and become even more pronounced,” said the bank. It added: “Brazil’s economy will be larger than Italy’s by 2020.”

So what exactly is Brazil’s position, which is the only one of these four nations that doesn’t have nuclear weapons, according to political-scientist Professor Luiz Alberto de Vianna Moniz Bandeira, within this tiny gang of powerful developing nations? In a Herald interview with the global investment research department at Goldman Sachs in Sao Paulo, the bank said the main issue contributing to the BRICs’ continued strength is the growth of the middle class as salaries increase.

“Russia started out advanced after the fall of communism but a continued harsh political framework has hindered its growth, as has its dependency on European commodities,” said the global investment research department in Sao Paulo.

“Although China has seen the most growth (within BRICs) in the past few years, with regards to incomes there, they are lower than in Latin America. Regardless, China’s story is still intact.”

And looking at Brazil, whose BN&FBovespa Stock Exchange saw equity outperformance of 294 percent from January 1, 2001 up to May 20 this year, its long-term outlook up to 2050 is just as positive as China’s, given Brazil’s performance when the global crisis hit.

“Although the late-2008 global credit freezes paralysed Brazilian credit spontaneously for a few months, when it became clear that the real Brazil/global linkages were weak, Brazilian banks and companies resumed business almost as if nothing had happened. When Brazil’s economy stabilised for the first time, that proved it was robust. With regards to the recent economic crisis, the feeling in Brazil is that if we can get through this, then we can get through anything.”

“Despite the high tax burden that Lula has imposed for a developing country which doesn’t invest much in itself, Brazil’s public accounts are in order, consumer and business confidence is at a record high and it is now a creditor rather than a debtor,” added the research department.

The latest Goldman Sachs report reiterated the view on the rise of the middle class. “In the coming decade, the more striking story will be the rise of the new BRICs middle class. In the last decade alone, the number of people with incomes greater than US$6,000 and less than US$30,000 has grown by hundreds of millions, and this number is set to rise even further in the next 10 years. Growth in the middle class will be led by China, where we expect the number of people entering the middle class to peak during this next decade. These trends imply an acceleration in demand potential that will affect the types of products the BRICs import: the import share of low value-added goods is likely to fall and imports of high value- added goods, such as cars, office equipment and technology, will rise.”

And Brazil may even take middle-class growth up an extra notch, according to Goldman Sachs. “The other BRICs (besides China and India and other emerging markets) will also see a rising middle class in the next decade, and should also see a rising “upper class” (incomes higher than US$30,000).”

Although a presidential election takes place this October, foreign investors are unlikely to be put off by either centre-left candidate, the ruling party’s Dilma Rousseff or PSDB’s José Serra, according to the bank. And with consumer and business confidence at a record high, who knows where the biggest boy of Latin America may end up. Watch this pace…

  that the Brazil the lowest unemployment rate in Brazil for the month of March since 1998, when it was 15.1%, even although unemployment in March rose to 13.7%, from 13% in February. The numbers are from a survey by the labor-union-linked Department of Socio-Economical Statistics and Studies (“DIEESE”), which took place in six metropolitan regions (São Paulo, Salvador, Belo Horizonte, Distrito Federal, Porto Alegre and Recife ).

The total number of jobless there is slightly over 2,760,000. DIEESE estimates the number of people holding jobs in those metropolitan regions at over 17,400,000. Between February and March, the DIEESE survey found that there was little variation in average take-home wages. Strong Output After a timid rise at the beginning of the year, the Brazilian industrial sector now shows strong growth.

According to a survey by the National Industrial Confederation (CNI), its production index rose from 49.2 in January and 50.8 in February to 62.9 in March. When the index is above 50 it indicates growth. Thus, the average production index for the first quarter was 55.5, the best since the third quarter of 2004.

A spokesperson for CNI says the numbers show that for all effects Brazil has come out of the Great Recession with flying colors. The percentage of installed capacity being used is now running at 74%. Just before the crisis, during the first quarter of 2008, it reached 75%. Confidence in the Brazilian industrial sector has remained steady (and high) during all of the first quarter. The CNI confidence index was 66.1 in March, compared to 66.2 in January.

Businesses are increasingly utilizing mobile applications and technologies on smartphones

From Yahoo.com

SEATTLE, Spring Wireless, a global leader in enterprise mobility platforms and applications, announced today that it has secured a $12 million series D round of financing. New investor SAP Ventures, a division of SAP AG, led the round, which also included the participation of existing investors Goldman Sachs and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). The new investment fuels Spring Wireless’ rapid growth in key growth markets around the world and funds product innovation in multiple verticals.

Businesses are increasingly utilizing mobile applications and technologies on smartphones and unwired devices to enable their employees to communicate, collaborate, and work efficiently with each other and their customers to adapt in a fast-paced consumer environment. Spring Wireless provides mission-critical mobility solutions to the enterprise market, comprised of software, infrastructure, connectivity and services.  This ”Solution as a Service” approach acts as the single point of contact in deploying, implementing and managing a robust platform across multiple devices and operating systems. Today, Spring Wireless serves more than 330,000 enterprise users within over 450 enterprises around the world, including customers such as Inbev, Kellogg’s, P&G, Kraft Foods, Citibank and Santander.
“Spring Wireless’ track record in delivering robust software solutions to some of the largest global companies in multiple verticals was a key factor in our decision to invest in the company,” said Doug Higgins, partner, SAP Ventures.
“We believe there is an enormous market for mobile enterprise software applications, in which Spring is positioned to be a leader,” said Patrick Kerins, chairman of Spring Wireless and general partner of NEA. “We welcome SAP Ventures as an investor as we continue to extend Spring’s global reach.”

“Mobility is quickly becoming an imperative in the enterprise market, as business cycles shrink and as the real-time enterprise emerges,” said Marcelo Conde, founder and chief strategic officer, Spring Wireless. “Spring Wireless’ involvement within the SAP ecosystem can be a catalyst to this industry transformation.”

“SAP is synonymous with bringing efficiency throughout internal enterprise operations,” notes Paulo Narcelio, president and CFO, Spring Wireless. “Now with mobile devices and networks gaining significant functionality, speed and reliability, we see our founding vision of operational efficiency becoming real in external business functions, involving the mobile value chain. We expect SAP Ventures’ investment and support of Spring Wireless to accelerate our vision of efficiency and productivity anywhere business activity happens.”

About Spring Wireless Offerings
Mobile Platform: Mobile Fusion™, Spring Wireless’ platform for secure and managed mobile solutions, provides customers the technical foundation they need to manage disparate devices, operating systems, backend systems and applications. The platform includes data transmission engines, security components, management tools and reports.

Pre-Built Solutions: Spring Wireless mSeries™ offers customers pre-built solutions for sales and services, warehouse and delivery, as well as marketing and merchandising that integrate backend systems with sales and delivery processes. The solutions have an intuitive user interface that helps customers to streamline operations, reduce product delays and increase customer satisfaction and sales.

Comprehensive Services: MSM™ (Mobile Solution Management) is part of Spring Wireless’ “Solutions as a Service” delivery model, giving customers a single point of contact for all their mobile service requirements. Spring Wireless’ delivery model is unique to the industry and the centralized service approach has resulted in as much as a 200 percent return on investment for customers.

About SAP Ventures
SAP Ventures invests in innovative and disruptive software and services companies globally. We pursue opportunities across all stages for outstanding financial return. Our goal is to bring substantial benefit to all parties by facilitating interaction between portfolio companies and SAP and its ecosystem of customers and partners. SAP Ventures has a successful track record of building industry-leading companies by partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and top-tier venture capital firms since 1996. For more information, visit www.sapventures.com.

About Spring Wireless
Spring Wireless delivers end-to-end mobility solutions designed to enable business and organizations to increase productivity, optimize real-time processes and operations, and maximize their business success. Founded in 2001, Spring Wireless is a global leader in platform technology for enterprise mobility software and the fastest-growing company in the market according to IDC Worldwide Mobile Middleware 2009–2013 Forecast .

Solutions from Spring Wireless allow customers to seamlessly connect their mobile workforces to corporate systems across various operating systems and devices, making relevant business information available at any time when needed.
As the single point of contact for end-to-end mobility business solutions for its customers, Spring Wireless deploys and manages comprehensive solutions that integrate software, infrastructure, connectivity and services, generating greater service levels and lower total cost of ownership.

With offices located worldwide and over 450 enterprise customers worldwide, implementation projects combine Spring Wireless’ technological leadership with a clear return on investment focus for customers. SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

SAP Forward-looking Statement
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

Monday, April 26, 2010
8:00 AM – 3:00 PM
The Grand Hyatt New York
109 East 42nd Street
New York City

To Register:
Click here to register online or click here to download the registration form.

Sponsorship and table reservations:
Please call the Chamber’s Executive Director, Sueli Bonaparte, at 212-751-4691 or email sueli@brazilcham.com.

By Betting in Brazil

You are a multinational company with a new product. Where will you test market: San Francisco, London, Jakarta, Switzerland, Japan or Brazil ?

Take a guess.

7.000 new products were introduced in Brazil in the first semester of 2009. Nearly 6% of all new products introduced in the world. Why?

For various reasons.

1. Brazil has the youngest population, excluding Africa, of the world. 26 year average, just in the beginning of a life cycle. That is a wonderful market to try new products. If you choose Switzerland, were everyone is loyal to a 30 year old brand, you may not be that successful.

2. Brazilians for many other reasons, are curious, technologically bent, and will try out everything new. We have more cell phones, more people on the internet, 80% of ORKUT affiliates of the world are Brazilian.

3. We speak a single language, USA has two, Switzerland has 4, and so on. Great for reducing advertising costs.  Read more.

Major fuel companies are continuing to work on partnerships in Brazil to produce ethanol. Following the recent announcement that Shell and Cosan are in negociations to form a joint venture, ETH Bioenergy, a large Brazilian producer in the country, has just announced it was acquiring its rival Brenco. The merger of the two companies operations is to create one of the world’s largest renewable fuel makers, with capacity to produce 3 billion liters of the biofuel  and 2,700 gigawatts of electricity by 2012. Other big-name companies have announced plans to build pipelines to transport ethanol. Petrobras, the Brazilian oil producer, formed a corporation with Japan´s Mitsui Co. and real estate developer Camargo Correa S.A. This month, Uniduto, a Brazilian pipeline developer, planned to start a campaign to raise $1 billion for a proposed pipeline.

By Chris Kraul – Los Angeles Times

 Brazil’s planned reentry into the satellite business next year is more than an effort to join an exclusive club and become a global player. It’s part of a far-reaching defense plan to ward off potential plunderers of its immense natural resources, officials say.

“In the coming era of scarcity, we’re going to have to defend what we’ve got with our claws, our feet and our weapons,” said a consultant to the Defense Ministry who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. “The challenges could come from neighbors, they could come from the U.S., they could come from China — all allies now, but potential competitors in the future.”

Brazil has a lot to protect.

Over the last two years, it has made one of the world’s largest oil discoveries off its Atlantic coast, a find that could propel it into the first rank of oil exporters by 2015. The nation also boasts enormous deposits of gold, uranium and iron ore and is the world’s largest exporter of chicken, soy, sugar and beef.

The value of these resources has skyrocketed along with demand from China, India and other emerging economies.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his advisors believe that the resources increasingly will be coveted by foreign powers as “global availability” of commodities is reduced by population growth, global warming and over-exploitation, said Thomaz Guedes da Costa, a professor at National Defense University in Washington.

So Brazil is doing more than counting its blessings: It has begun to take measures to expand and modernize its defenses as part of a strategic plan to dissuade foreign usurpers from making a play for its natural riches.

In an interview here in Brazil’s capital, Defense Ministry spokesman Jose Ramos Filho said the military buildup was “defensive, not offensive,” and was meant as a deterrent against nations that in coming decades may lust after Brazil’s resources, even water. Better surveillance, weapons and the means to deploy them will make potential enemies think twice about an attack, he said.

Restarting Brazil’s unmanned space program, which has been on hold since a launchpad disaster killed 21 people in 2003, is an integral part of the plan. A new generation of satellites is planned to help Brazil monitor its agriculture, forests, mineral resources — and territory.

This month, Lula said on a state visit to Ukraine that he hoped to launch a Brazilian satellite aboard a Ukrainian rocket by the end of his term next December. By 2012, Brazil plans to be launching satellites aboard its own rockets, said Himilcon Carvalho, policy director of the Brazilian Space Agency.

Brazil and Ukraine are forming a joint venture to offer launch services at Alcantara in northern Brazil, the site of the 2003 disaster.

Although Brazil has five communication and imaging satellites in space, all were launched by the Chinese or private U.S. launchers, and Brazil wants more control, Carvalho said.

“We want to forecast crops and monitor our coastlines, but also know our territory and gather data from it,” Carvalho said. “Defense is a byproduct. The military is very fond of surveillance and wants to know what’s going on over land and sea.”

A space program and modern weapons are a status marker: the price of membership to the first rank of nations, those that are rule makers, not rule takers, said Guedes da Costa of National Defense University.

“Brazil wants to be a player in world trade, the environment, and have a seat on the U.N. Security Council. For the leadership, that translates into military purchases if you are going to participate at that level,” he said.

The space program is only one element of Brazil’s plan. The country has signed deals to acquire new weaponry, including helicopters and submarines, in technology-sharing arrangements. It will soon choose a vendor for 36 jet fighters it is buying at a cost of $4 billion or more. France’s Dassault is thought to be the front-runner against Boeing and Sweden’s Saab to supply them.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a defense analyst with the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said Brazil was overdue in replacing arms systems not updated in many cases since the 1980s, when the nation was still ruled by a military dictatorship.

“Military budgets have pretty much stagnated since then, so what’s going on to some extent is a replacing and upgrading of equipment that’s aging, and that’s understandable,” Felbab-Brown said.

The consultant to the Defense Ministry agreed that the need to replace outdated hardware was a big driver of the defense plan. There was little public support for big military purchases until now because the memory of Brazil’s military dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 to 1985, was too fresh.

“Now there’s a recognition that the need to create a modern armed forces is vital,” the consultant said.

But a big, modern military is also part of Brazil’s emerging status as a global power.

“We are now the world’s ninth-largest economy and we will continue to grow,” the consultant said. “So we must have a military status that is commensurate with our economic size and international influence.”

Kraul is a special correspondent.