Brazil moves six positions up in competitiveness ranking

Valor Econômico - 05/15/2008

Yesterday, two weeks after having received the investment grade from Standard & Poor's (S&P), Brazil received some good news about the level of competitiveness of its economy: the country gained six positions in the 2008 ranking issued by Swiss business school IMD. Brazil went from the 49^th to 43^rd place, in a list with 55 countries, after two consecutive years of fall in the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook. The leap was pushed mainly by the greater business efficiency and the good performance of the economy. Compared to other Bric countries, Brazil appears behind China (17^th) and India (29^th), but ahead of Russia (47^th). However, the Brazilian economy was the only one among the four to gain positions this year - the Chinese and Indian economies lost two positions each and the Russian, four. The USA is in the leadership, closely followed by Singapore. In the corporate efficiency pillar, the country went from 40^th place up to 29^th. According to Professor Carlos Arruda, from Fundação Dom Cabral (Dom Cabral Foundation), Brazil has an efficient private sector, in which the stars of this year's survey were the adaptation of the companies to market changes, the opening to new ideas, and the efficiency of the big companies in producing in compliance with international quality standards. "The corporate community is more optimistic", said Arruda, making comments on the survey carried out between January and April this year. Brazil had its worst performance in the infrastructure pillar, in which the country fell down from 49^th place to 50^th. "That strengthens the importance and urgency of the Growth Acceleration Plan (PAC in Portuguese)", declared Arruda. "The PAC is in the right path but its implementation speed is still very slow". 

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