Brazil Selling Itself to China as Best Place for Investment

Paranaguá port in the south of Brazil Seeking investments in ports and roads from China, its largest market for agricultural products, Brazil, the world's largest exporter of poultry and second-biggest supplier of soybeans, wants to see the Chinese investing much more in the country.

"The biggest difficulty we have is logistics," said Célio B. Porto, Secretary of Agribusiness for International Relations at Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply, in an interview in Singapore. "Our biggest problem in improving our production is lack of capital."

Brazil needs better transportation for a smoother flow of goods to port, Porto said in Singapore. The country supplied products including soybeans, frozen meat and tobacco worth US$ 11 billion to China, accounting for about a fifth of its agricultural exports, he said.

China, which has one-fifth of the world's population and seven percent of the planet's arable land, has been looking to the Philippines and Africa for strategic food supplies. The country is the world's largest buyer of soybeans, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

"The investments China has been making in Asia and Africa represent future production. Brazil's competitiveness comes from having present production," Porto said. "While Africa has a lot of land, it doesn't have the technology or the responsiveness Brazil already has to meet China's needs," he added.

Porto is leading a government delegation to Singapore, Hong Kong and China to expand markets for its products. Last year's exports to Hong Kong were valued at US$ 1.2 billion, and to Singapore, at US$ 298 million, he informed.

Brazil is seeking to benefit from scandals, such as the one in China involving milk and other products tainted with melamine.

"There's an increase in demand for our dairy products where Australia and New Zealand are the biggest exporters for Asia. The same is happening in eggs," Porto said. "This was what happened with Brazilian beef exports when there was 'mad cow disease' in the U.S." in late 2003.

Meanwhile, the global credit crisis and a decline in prices of food grains from records may lower investments in agriculture, causing future food shortages, he said.

"With this fall in prices of agricultural products in the world, the lack of investment in these products will occur first where the cost of production is higher and that is not the case in Brazil," Porto concluded.

Mercopress

Tags:

You May Also Like

Mouth- watering Bit

OTHER BRAZILIAN FOODS By Habeeb Salloum The first time I entered a restaurant in ...

Brazil Media’s Fear to Call Terror by Its Name

Brazil’s weekly newsmagazine Veja‘s cover story (edition 1896, 03/16) denouncing the financial resources offer ...

Jewish Leader in Brazil Accuses Israel of Doing Dirty Work in Lebanon

The president of the Israelite Confederation in Brazil, rabbi Henry Sobel, informed that the ...

Grandma Silvana Urges Lula to Let Sean Talk and Calls Goldman’s Move Unfortunate

Sean Goldman’s grandmother, Silvana Bianchi, in another interview with the Brazilian press, said she ...

Bush and Sharon Pointed as Terrorists by 200,000 at Brazil’s WSF

The President of the United States, George W. Bush, did not attend the opening ...

Polls Show Lula Losing Reelection in Brazil to Josí© Serra

Brazilian opposition candidate José Serra has become the top presidential contender in Brazil, according ...

Only Zero Deforestation Can Save Brazil’s Rainforest

High-tech smuggling operations may not be what you'd normally associate with the ongoing clearance ...

Brazil’s Chicken Breeders Get Mad at Bolivian President for Gay Comments

Chicken breeders of Brazil, the world’s largest exporters of the bird rejected and slammed ...

Brazil’s UNESP Gets LatAm’s Most Powerful Computer Network

Brazil's UNESP (São Paulo State University) will be installing in the coming weeks its ...

Brazil’s Bank to Finance Mercosur’s Auto Sector

Brazil’s Minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Luiz Fernando Furlan, says that the ...