MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazilian agency to compete for foreign investment

The Investment branch from the Brazilian Agency for the promotion of Exports, APEX, will be officially launched by president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva January 16 in Davos, Switzerland, the largest world gathering of political and business leaders.

The target of the Investment branch is to attract 20 billion US dollars in 2005 for infrastructure projects both public and private, emphasizing in energy.

Ingo Ploger who is head of Investment Apex said that the international standing of Brazilian president Lula da Silva makes the launching particularly attractive since Brazil is acknowledged as a market economy, ruled by a solid democracy with transparent rules.

"At this moment Brazil is growing with stability and credibility. We're in the front line to dispute foreign investment with China, India, Russia and Mexico. We're under no crisis and this is important because it widens risk visibility. Our idea is to transfer to investment the export efficiency shown in 2004", said Mr. Ploger.

Apex in 2003 supported 8,196 Brazilian companies exports equivalent to 2 billion US dollars, mainly through 410 events. In 2004 the number of companies jumped to 13,500 and the volume of exports to 12 billion US dollars.

For 2005 Apex is planning 550 events in 54 countries involving 15,000 Brazilian companies. Some of the countries and areas with greatest potential for exports from Brazilian small and medium companies are US, Europe, China, Japan, Middle East and Indonesia.

Mr. Ploger revealed that a point to underline and attract long term foreign investors is the fact that profit transfers from Brazil are higher than those from China, 15% against 10%. This year only overseas transfers from direct investments in Brazil will be reaching between 16 and 17 billion US dollars.

Another interesting indicator for investors is the degree of openness of an economy or in technical terms, external insertion, which refers to the overall foreign trade of a country.

Mr. Ploger said the world average is 22%, but Brazil in the last three years has jumped from 13% to 30%, and in 2004 expects overseas trade to reach 156 billion US dollars.

"Our objective in 2005 will be to attract 20 billion US dollars in long term investment for energy and infrastructure projects particularly road systems, ports and railways", emphasized Mr. Ploger.