|
 Latin America's largest port, the port of Santos in southeastern Brazil, had a throughput of 38.4 million tons in the first half, growth of 3% over the same period of 2008. It was the second best result ever for the period, losing only to 2007, when the throughput was 38.8 million tons.
Considering the first semester performance of the port's operating company, Companhia Docas de Santos, the port is expected to end the year with a throughput of 81.4 million tons.
Exports in the first six months this year totaled 28.6 million tons, 18.6% more than in the first half of 2008. The highlights were agricultural cargo and products (sugar, coffee beans, corn, vegetable oils, citrus pellets, soybean) and liquid bulk oil derivatives (diesel oil, gas oil, gasoline and fuel oil).
Imports, in turn, decreased by 25.5%, despite the increase in imports of LPG, salt and wheat.
According to the management of the port complex, a new all-time high has been recorded in the number of ships docked in the first half of the year. Santos received 2,865 vessels, 1.3% more than the figure recorded in the same period last year (2,828 ships).
Santos tops the list of Brazilian ports in terms of share of the balance of trade, with 27% (US$ 34 billion) out of a national total of US$ 126 billion (1st half of 2009).
It is worth noting that with regard to the volume shipped through the Port of Santos, countries in the Far East were the destination for 5.1 million tons or 20.5% of total exports from the port.
The figures supplied by Companhia Docas de Santos reveal that shipments of coffee bean through the Santos port complex totaled 555,600 tons, growth of 35.1% over the same period of last year.
The volume of coffee shipments through the Port of Santos attests to its importance for the Brazilian coffee export sector: out of every four bags of coffee exported from Brazil, three leave from the Port of Santos.
In fact, Companhia Docas de Santos points out that statistics from the Brazilian Ministry of Development rank Santos as the leading gateway for exports of coffee beans, with 72.3% of total shipments, followed by Vitória (14.62%) and Itaguaí (6.4%).
Elite
A survey conducted by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA), the world's foremost organization in the sector, reveals that Brazil ranks 7th among the countries that host the most international events worldwide. There were 254 international events in the country in 2008 that met the criteria of the association, consolidating Brazil among the elite of the world's ten leading event-hosting countries.
For the second time running, São Paulo is the leading international event-hosting city in the Americas, having risen from the 23rd to the 12th position in the global ranking. Rio de Janeiro, Foz do Iguaçu, Porto Alegre, Salvador, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Florianópolis, Recife, Fortaleza and Campinas are the other Brazilian cities in the list of cities that hosted at least five international events in 2008.
Last year, Brazil promoted 254 international events that met the criteria set by the ICCA (traveling events that are regularly held and with minimum attendance of 50 participants). In 2007, there were 209 events.
The ICCA survey also points to a strong trend of decentralization, in Brazil, with regard to locations in which international events are held: in 2003, 22 Brazilian cities held events that met the criteria of the ICCA. In 2008, the figure rose to 42 different cities.
Preliminary data from a first-of-its-kind survey by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, commissioned by the Brazilian Tourism Institute (Embratur), show that the direct economic impact of spending by foreign participants in just fourteen international events held in Brazil was US$ 14,949,558.00.
The survey shows that average spending by foreign tourists attending events in Brazil is US$ 314.70 - much more than the average spending by business tourists in the country, which is US$ 165.14, and by leisure tourists (US$ 73.53).
Most of the spending, according to the survey, went to lodging (45.04%), food and beverages (13%), purchases and gifts (11.95%), transport (7.62%) and culture and leisure: US$ 1,118,039 (7.48%).
Anba
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.