|
 With permission by the Brazilian government for payment in the national currency abroad exporters now will be able to close their sales contracts in reais, making it possible to escape fluctuation of the dollar, as is now taking place, with all foreign trade contracts being closed in the American currency.
The Central Bank of Brazil now needs to regulate this procedure. Once this takes place, Brazilian exporters will have additional gain in their sales to the foreign market. By making payments in reais, expenses with exchange contracts are eliminated.
Bank of the South
Established to be an alternative to institutions like the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Bank of the South should begin its operations in 2009 with an authorized capital of US$ 20 billion.
The capital to be subscribed by the member countries will be US$ 10 billion. Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela are going to participate with US$ 2 billion each. The remains will be invested by Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay.
The important question, however, is how can the voting power of the three countries that invested most of the capital be the same as that of minority partners?
What is expected is that the Bank of the South should be an instrument to foster development and not an ideological tool. The bank arose as an initiative of the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.
Up to now, the countries that have formally accepted to participate in the project are Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay. But the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) partners also include Chile, Colombia, Guiana, Peru and Suriname.
Champions of the Skies
Africa and the Middle East were the regions that registered the greatest increases in passenger traffic on international flights in May, in comparison with the same period last year. The growth was 20% and 15%, respectively, according to figures provided July 1st by the Airports Council International (ACI), an organization that represents airport management companies.
In the area of domestic flights, the flow grew most in Latin America and the Caribbean (4%), followed by Asia and the Pacific (3%). In total, the passenger movement in airports rose 3% in May. In the accumulated result for the year, the growth in the passenger flow was 4.6%.
Cooperatives
The former minister of Agriculture of Brazil, Roberto Rodrigues, is launch this July 4 his book Cooperatives: Surfing the Second Wave -Democracy and Peace (Cooperativismo: surfando a segunda onda - democracia e paz). The book is a collection of articles, documents and interviews he published in recent years.
The book is an insight into decades of dedication to cooperatives, in which he taught and participated in the main organizations in the main civil societies and in the government.
Rodrigues, after talking to heads of state in five continents, restates his belief in associations as the best method for economic and social development, methods viable for construction of a better world.
On Land and Water
The Fisheries Industrial Unit of Consolata Agroindustrial Cooperative, the largest in Brazil, has started operating. Based in the city of Nova Aurora, in the western region of the state of Paraná, the industrial complex, which includes slaughter, industrialization and trade units, received investment of 15 million Brazilian reais (US$ 11.2 million) in funds by the Regional Development Bank for the Extreme South (BRDE) and should generate 100 direct jobs in the city.
The initial slaughter and industrialization capacity of the slaughterhouse is 10 tons of tilapias per day, and the target is to reach 50 tons a day by 2012.
Twenty five years ago, the Consolata Agroindustrial Cooperative, based in Cafelândia, in Western Paraná, dared and established a chicken industrialization unit, a courageous act at the time. Nowadays, poultry products made by the cooperative are reference in the sector.
Blue Skies
In the last 12 months, the automotive industry has grown 20.3%. The minister of Development, Miguel Jorge, has no doubt that the production of carmakers should continue growing. "Today Brazil produces 3.3 million vehicles a year. Our expectation is for this figure to reach 5 million," forecasts Jorge.
The minister, considering global production figures disclosed by Volkswagen, believes that in 2008 the country should overtake Germany in the production of vehicles of the brand. Nowadays the carmaker's Brazilian subsidiary loses only to China and Germany. Since it based itself in Brazil, Volkswagen has produced over 17 million vehicles of the most varied models.
King of Spain
Petrobras was the great winner of the award The Young Author, granted by the World Petroleum Congress (WPC) to the best study promoted by professional youths (up to 35 years of age). Production engineers Jaime Naveiro, Fernando Mendes and Pedro Medina received the award from Spanish king Juan Carlos I, in a ceremony on June 30, in Madrid.
The study analyses the perspectives for the balance between offer and demand of natural gas in the Southern Cone, calculating the commercial advantages of the main countries. Different sceneries have been created to evaluate the impact new projects forecasted for the region may have on relations between countries and what impact they may have on future negotiations.
You can contact the author writing to joel.guimaraes@anba.com.br or joel@agenciameios.com.br.
Anba
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
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. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.