Brazil is a very commercially closed country and the current government intends to promote “a responsible opening in the next four years”. The Secretary for Foreign Trade and International Affairs of the Ministry of Economy, Marcos Troyjo, said in the panel The Importance of International Trade, held on Tuesday (5/02) during the Courier Debate: “Challenges of the Economy in 2019” .
Troyjo gave a brief historical account to analyze the various economic miracles observed in the world in the last 70 years. According to him, the countries that managed to change the level in that period – Germany, Japan, Chile, China, Spain, Singapore and South Korea – achieved this evolution based on international relations. “These nations had a significant share of their GDP (Gross Domestic Product) represented by the sum of exports and imports. These countries have used foreign trade as a springboard, “he said.
Meanwhile, compared Troyjo, other countries remained “ensimmed” with a small portion of foreign trade, exporting and importing little. “In Brazil, if we exclude the famous cycles of export monoculture (coffee and sugarcane), we rarely see a time when the country has more than 30% of GDP represented by foreign trade,” said the secretary.
According to him, the share that Brazil occupies in all international trade is also small, ranges from 1% to 1.3% among everything that is bought and sold in the world. “Brazil is a closed country and we need to open up. But success is not just about openness. It needs to be accompanied by other measures, “he said.
Troyjo stated that three compartments need to be considered: conjuncture, structure and openness. “Currently, circumstances point to the trade dispute between the two powers China and the United States. Some say there is a cold war between the two, but the fact is that there is a high degree of interdependence between the two nations, “he said.
The secretary stressed that Brazil needs to re-focus on relations with the United States. “At our juncture, we can not fail to take into account our trade relations with the US,” he reiterated. But markets like Southeast Asia and Mercosur can not be ignored either.
“What we need to do is to structure ourselves for this competition. Our agenda is to correct misconceptions of the past, which goes through reforms. We need to be able to respond, which is our trade policy, “he said. The formulation of internal coordination, said the secretary, is to define the national interest and improve our multi-agency system. “
About the opening, Troyjo stressed that the country is closed by tariff barriers, rules and bureaucracy. “We are going to open the country for the next four years. Whether the negotiation or tariff front, the simplification of processes and the drop in taxes, or the exposure of Brazilian sectors, the economy will open. It will be much more integrated. But we will not do it in an irresponsible way, but with syntony and synchrony, “he said.
Source: Correio Brasiliense
