São Paulo GDP gains weight in Brazil
Folha de S. Paulo - 12/20/2007
The main economy of the country has become even bigger: the city of São Paulo has gained weight in the GDP of the Brazilian cities and went from a participation of 11.7% in 2004 to 12.3% in 2005 - but, in 2002, the percentage was 12.8%. The result reveals the strong economic concentration of the country, in which five cities alone have produced one fourth of all the national goods and services. Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Curitiba, and Belo Horizonte were in the list, in addition to the capital of São Paulo. The data is part of the survey on the GDP of the Cities, released yesterday by the IBGE. São Paulo had the greatest gain among all cities, with more than 0.5% of the GDP - 0.6 percentage points. Its GDP was equivalent to R$ 263.2 billion (US$ 108.1 billion). And it is not only the São Paulo capital that shows its vigor: the five greatest GDPs of cities that are not capital cities are in the State of São Paulo - Barueri, Guarulhos, Campinas, São Bernardo do Campo, and Osasco. All have around 1% of the GDP of the country. The poor GDP distribution, according to the survey, is not limited to these cities: 51 cities alone correspond to 50% of the Brazilian GDP, although they represent only 30.5% of the population. On the other hand, 1,371 cities (24.6% of the total of 5,554) represented 1% of the economy of the country in 2005.