Despite the crisis, 82% of the companies intend to invest in the country in 2009
Valor Econômico 02/20/2009
Notwithstanding their being mainly concerned with the uncertainty in the economy and, in a lesser extent with the shortage of credit and the reduction of the demand, 82% of the companies in the country intend to invest in 2009. But their investments have changed their target: in 2008, the companies invested to increase their productive capacity. This year, most businesspeople willing to invest intend to invest in the increase of the productivity, in the improvement of the quality of the products, and in the reduction of costs. The trend to invest in the increase of the efficiency of the production will not obligatorily lead to the reduction of jobs in the industry, but it will affect the increase of employment, believes the head of the unit of research of the CNI (Brazilian National Confederation of Industry) Renato da Fonseca. Another relevant trend is the directing of the production to the domestic market. The companies that had the foreign market as a priority, which were more than 10% of the total until 2005, and fell to 4.6% last year, now in 2009, are only 3.3%. 73% of the companies (51% of the large companies) will have the domestic market as a priority and only 24% intend to produce equally for the both markets (among the large companies alone such percentage is 40%). 75% of the entrepreneurs heard by CNI, which interviewed 1.4 thousand companies between January 5 and 26, believe the economic uncertainties may totally or partially prevent the investments forecast for 2009. For 43% of them investments can be frustrated by revaluating the demand and 19% of them attribute to the cost of credit the obstacles to the investment plans; 19% of them also mention the credit, but its shortage, as a hindering factor to the investments. In a demonstration that the crisis has uneven effects, nine sectors of the processing industry, besides the extractive industry, point the increase of the productive capacity as the main reason to invest in 2009. Among them are the sectors of cleaning and perfumery and two sectors that had bad performance in the accomplishment of investments last year: rubber and pharmaceuticals. The index created to measure the adequacy of the installed capacity of production shows that, despite the investments forecast for expansion, only the companies of the pharmaceutical sector and those from non-metallic minerals believe their installed capacity are under the expectations of the demand.