Brazil advances in IT in Latin America
Valor Econômico 04/23/2009
In the past weeks, many CEOs of technology companies have arrived in the Brazilian airports interested in exploring new opportunities in the country. Brazil has become part of the route of these executives for some time, but, apparently, the visits were intensified in the last months. The reason? With the strong retraction of the demand in more mature markets, they are coming here to see by themselves if, in fact, the information technology businesses in the country are growing at a much faster pace than in the United States or Europe.
It is an assumption that is also applicable in the comparison with the Latin America neighbors, taking into account the result of a survey made by the Everis Spanish consulting company. According to the survey, in the first quarter Brazil was only behind Peru in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), which indicates the growth of the base of computers, cell phones, internet access, etc.. The increase reached 9.3% compared to the same period of last year (in Peru, the expansion amounted to 13.7%). The average expenditure with ICT per person in Brazil fell 19.4%, to US$ 332. Such a fall, however, does not mean the consumption has decreased, it is the result of the subsidy and discounts offered by manufacturers, operators and retailers, explains Teodoro López, vice-president of Everis in the country. In another item of the survey, Brazil headed the improvements in the Information Society Index (ISI), which measures the level of maturity of the population in relation to technology, and not merely its consumption. According to López, the growth in this item has been occurring in the last five quarters, but the country is still far form an ideal scenario. In practice, the Brazilian performance means that, for the first time, the country got to the average of points of the region as a whole. For López, the result shows Brazil is starting to change the historical situation of inequality in the purchases of technology, traditionally concentrated in the great centers of the Southern and Southeastern regions.