Insights

Doing business in Brazil an interview with Paulo Dortas

The outlook has improved somewhat since the ANC’s Manguang conference at the end of last year. It is encouraging for business leaders to see the adoption of the national development plan, with various measures to tackle unemployment, poverty and inequality.

On 18 January, the National Bureau of Statistics in China revealed that the economy’s working-age population shrank by 3.45m in 2012.

On the one hand, the results from our once-every-two-years look at the world’s leading emerging markets were encouraging. Business leaders across the world are looking at international expansion opportunities.

Your questions answered by Nigel Davies, your questions answered by Nigel Davis

Monday night’s news that international lenders had reached an agreement on how to remedy Greece’s bailout programme, thereby releasing a delayed €34.4bn aid payment, was an important step for the future of the eurozone. But as the crisis drags on and growth rates continue to disappoint, the cost to businesses keeps on rising.

The Philippine economy is growing fast. GDP expanded by 6.8% in 2012 and, whilst remittances climbed to a record high of US$23.8 billion in 2012, their share of GDP actually dropped to 8.5%, down from 9% in 2011.

One of the most interesting aspects of our recent Global Dynamism Index (GDI) was the strong performance of mature economies. It was a result Ed Nusbaum described as counterintuitive in that the word dynamism tends to be attributed to faster growing emerging markets such as the BRIC economies.

The global economy is going through a very difficult phase. Growth in key emerging markets such as China, Brazil and India is slowing. In the United States, the economy seems to be treading water as everyone waits for the presidential elections in November, despite the looming ‘fiscal cliff’.

We believe that dynamic organisations need to apply both reason and instinct to decision making. Deciding which markets your business should operate in is no different.