Toy industry wants share of imported goods
Folha de S. Paulo
The toy industry in Brazil expects a 15% growth for the domestic market this year, according to the forecast of Abrinq (Brazilian Association of Toy Manufacturers). After celebrating an increase of 11% of the sector in 2010, domestic manufacturers want to take advantage of the tax increase to the import to resume part of the share of foreigners in the country.
Seventh toy market in the world, "Brazil is one of the only survivors of the Chinese attack in America", says Synésio Batista da Costa, president of Abrinq, at the Toy Fair in Nuremberg, Germany. According to him, the earnings of the industry stayed at R$ 3 billion (US$ 1.7 billion), but the goal is to gain another 5% share over the Chinese, origin of almost 90% of the Brazilian imports.
To achieve this goal, the national industry keeps 2,000 launchings scheduled for this year. The retailers and Brazilians importers who were gathering exclusiveness among the 70 thousand launchings from 63 countries at the fair in Nuremberg - the biggest in the sector - do not show much optimism. For Ricardo Sayon, owner of Ri Happy, the safeguarding to imported toys "is an absurd." He questions the protection citing a study to be released by FIA (Management Institute Foundation), which "identifies that the Brazilian toy market was static for decades and only began to grow after 2004 with the end of the safeguarding". "Retailers need a diversity that the domestic industry does not have", says Sayon, exemplifying that Brazil does not produce metal cars in scale, interactive dolls, stuffed animals and electrical chips.
In this dispute, the core of the issue is in China, country that produces almost 75% of toys in the world, whose export schedule for the segment reached US$ 5.5 billion, and home of the largest factories in the industry. It is not a coincidence that the Chinese pavilion at the fair quadrupled its space this year when compared to 2009, with 61 Chinese producers. The Nuremberg Toy Fair received 79 thousand visitors this year, 54% were foreigners from 115 countries.