Against the tide, BNDES sees investments of 19% of the GDP
Valor Econômico
In 2009 Brazil will repeat the strong (compared to a recent past) investment rate of 19% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reached last year. The projection was made by the National Development Bank (BNDES) and it differs from all the estimates made by private consulting companies, economic departments of the banks and even by the academy. In order to get to such an optimistic and controversial conclusion, the Area of Economic Research (APE, in Portuguese) of the bank consulted the institution itself (and the list of disbursements foreseen and new projects presented), the strategic plans of large companies (like Petrobras, Vale, CSN, among others) and sector projections (like that of the civil construction sector).
According to the accounts made by the BNDES, the crisis will delay in two years the achievement of an investment rate equivalent to 21% of the GDP - a level reached for the last time in the 70's. In the projection prior to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September, the expenditure in machines and equipment as well as in civil construction and in infrastructure would get to 20.9% do GDP in 2010. Now, this projection is made for 2012.
Even with such two-year delay to get to a rate of 21%, the BNDES believes the rate of 2008 will be repeated in 2009. "Today the investment rate in Brazil is more resilient than in the past", summarizes Gilberto Rodrigues Borça Junior, one of the authors of the study of the BNDES. Fernando Pimentel Puga, head of the area of economic research and another author of the study, adds that such resistance is also based upon a change in the composition of the investment. In the past years, he explains, infrastructure and oil and gas were responsible for an increasing part of the investment, whereas the proportional weight of the industry (whose announcements of projects of new plants or of increase of the current units have more impact in the public opinion) has decreased.
Among others the reason for the lesser impact of the crisis on part of the investment, Borça Junior and Puga list the discoveries of oil in the pre-salt layer, the more solid situation of the Brazilian economy, the recovery of the investments in electric energy after a clear definition of the regulatory mark of the sector and the new technologies (3G) in the telecommunication sector. Puga and Borça Junior also assert the portfolio of projects of the BNDES is another "guarantee" of a hefty rate of investments this year. The disbursements, they say, will exceed R$ 100 billion (US$ 48 billion), without including the R$ 25 billion (US$ 12 billion) reserved to Petrobras.