GDP increase reaches expansion of companies
Folha de S. Paulo - 03/09/2008
There is a China under development inside Brazil, with annual growth rates that go beyond 10% a year, at least since 2001. The elite of large Brazilian companies manages to do it regardless of the low growth seen in the recent past, which surpassed 5% only last year. The news is that the GDP expansion achieved the level of progress of the companies that started the most recent growth cycle. A study by Economática, a consulting company, shows that, whereas the GDP grew around 3% in recent years, the Brazilian publicly-held companies of the productive sector had a vigorous increase of more than 6% in their revenues. With an expansion of the GDP between 5.2% and 5.3% - IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) releases on Wednesday the official data -, these two different worlds start getting closer again. In other words, the vigorous growth spreads out throughout the economy. In the survey, the companies of the retail sector had their revenues increased by 13.32% in 2007 - twice the expansion of 6% expected by the LCA Consultores, and of 6.1% projected by Tendências - for the consumption of the families. In the study, the increase of the level of investment of the largest companies - excluding Vale, which purchased Canadian Inco by US$ 15 billion - grew 10%, little less than the 13.5% estimated by LCA and the 13.4% estimated by Tendências. The study takes into account nearly one hundred publicly-held companies that have already released their 2007 results, but does not consider the banks. It also excludes companies that have gone through major changes, such as mergers and split-offs. Outside the Brazilian borders, the engine of the recovery of the GDP at the beginning of the decade came from exportations, especially from the mineral and energy commodities. After 2001, China needed to import inputs to supply its industrial park. The increase in the price of commodities influenced the prices of food, of which Brazil is also a producer. For the country, the change brought a violent dollar flow, rebalanced the exchange rate, increased the confidence in the economy, allowed the fall in the interest rates, increased private investments, and allowed the increase of the credit.