Brazilian entrepreneurs among worlds most optimistic
Folha de S. Paulo
Brazilian entrepreneurs are on the podium of the global championship of confidence on good deals for the immediate future (2011) and also for the near future (until 2014). Such is the confidence they are among the most willing to hire, tied up with the formidable China/Hong Kong machine. Such findings are featured in the annual survey made by PwC (PricewaterhouseCooper) in the end of 2010 and presented yesterday in Davos, as it has done for 14 years, on the eve of the inauguration of annual summit of World Economic Forum.
PwC surveyed 1,201 chief executives of 69 countries. 68% of the Brazilians polled say they will hire more employees this year, the third highest percentage. If the perspective is turned into hires, it will have both economic and political effects. Economic because, as it is obvious, there will be more people employed and therefore that moves the wheels of the economy. Political because having a job is the main source of the "feel good factor" called, such "feel good" perhaps was the main lever for the victory of Dilma Rousseff.
But since the next elections, next year, take place at the municipal level, the "feel good" beneficiaries tend to be the current mayors. As a general rule, the voter does not make a distinction of the "feel good" factor at Municipal, State or Federal levels. The enthusiasm of the Brazilian executives of hiring more is only below that of the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), which gathers the new tigers, influenced by the growth of China, and that of the Indians, the other great locomotive of global growth.
Such optimism only knows one shadow: The fear the Government raises the taxes, expressed by 63% of the Brazilians polled. It is, anyhow, a universal and logical fear: nearly all Governments had to increase their debts and their deficit to prevent the world from breaking down in the 2008/09 crisis. Now they are forced to adopt austerity measures to reconstitute the health of their finances. Even Brazil is announcing cuts in the expenditures, even though it has not suffered the effects of the crisis with the same intensity.
Wasn't it for such fear, the 2011 Davos meeting would begin in an environment of so much optimism between executives that they would seem to have returned to the pre-crisis spirit. Little more than half (51%), says they are very confident in the business perspectives for the next three years, when, at the peak of the crisis, only 34% demonstrated such confidence. But the crisis feeling has not been totally defeated in the immediate future: only 48%, not 51%, expect great deals for 2011, still below 50% of the hyper-confidents of the 2008 survey, when the crisis began to spread.