Exports to China enable Brazil to cope with global financial crisis

Brazil’s trade authority said Monday that exports to China in 2009 have enabled Brazil to cope with the impact of the global financial crisis and suggested that the country’s exporting firms should orient their sales.

Brazil has launched a more specific business strategy for China since 2008, and foreign trade in the Chinese market this year has remained balanced, Alessandro Teixeira, president of the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, said at a press conference.

“Last year it was assessed that there would be a significant drop in Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP), and we have oriented companies to target other markets such as China,” he said, suggesting that China would be a more attractive export destination.

Thanks to the South American country’s strategy to overcome the crisis, its government had prompted larger shares of Brazilian exports to the Asian market, like fashion, jewelry and clothing.

Teixeira also stressed that China’s food market remains very promising, noting that the running model of the Brazilian fast food chains operating in the Middle East could be cited as an example.

Meanwhile, a study available to business practitioners has identified 40 Chinese cities that could be profitable for Brazilian entrepreneurs.

Teixeira believed that the tendency of oriental exports will consolidate Brazil’s business engagement in China, without posing risks to Brazilian foreign sales to other markets.

“China is becoming a structural trade partner of Brazil,” he said. “We see China as an opportunity, not as a threat to Brazilian exports.”

Teixeira also promised that in next year’s Shanghai Expo, Brazil will make a massive investment to “change the outlook of Brazil” in the global trade fair.

Against the backdrop of the financial crisis, China-Brazil trade volume has kept growing. Statistics from Brazil showed that bilateral trade in April reached 3.2 billion U.S. dollars, with China becoming Brazil’s largest trading partner.

In addition, the two major developing countries also signed a 10- billion-U.S.-dollar oil trade and financing agreement in May.

It is expected that China-Brazilian trade relations could be more than doubled in the next five to six years.