BBC's "Five Villains of Growth in Brazil"

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

You've heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right? Well, meet the "Five Villains in the Growth of Brazil," as listed in this article on the website "BBC Brasil."

According to the article, these are the villains, followed by my comments:


1. Precarious infrastructure

2. Lack of skilled labor force

3. Complex tax ​​system

4. Low rate of public and private investment

5. Excessive bureaucracy

Here are my comments and/or further explanations from the article itself:

1. The shaky infrastructure is confirmed in a Forbes article, which stated that only 14% of Brazil's roads are paved. That article also reports that Dilma is address the challenge by announcing a government auction for private contractors to bid on infrastructure projects. The investment is expected to be $66 billion.

2. The lack of a skilled work force should improve as education improves, but that will take time. One of Dilma's main focuses is on expanding educational opportunities, with particular focus on science and engineering.

3. According to many observers, Brazil's tax system is one of the most complex in the world, and most people agree that it needs to be reformed. Accomplishing that task is not going to be easy, however. Dilma hopes to move to a VAT-style tax system instead of Brazil's current payroll tax system. Meanwhile, she's hoping to simplify the tax payment process for businesses by establishing an online tax-payment system.

4. The article says that the current rate of investment in Brazil is about 18% of the GDP, and experts say it needs to be about 25% of GDP in order to sustain healthy economic growth.  

5. Brazil's bureaucracy is notorious not only for its size and pervasiveness, but its grinding slowness.  According to the article, Brazil ranks 126 out of 183 countries when it comes to the ease of doing business. This puts it below the average for other Latin American countries. North Americans who complain about our own bureaucracy don't have a clue how lucky we are by comparison.

So, yet another article about the challenges that Brazil must confront in order to maintain and build upon its remarkable economic growth.