A sustainable economic recovery in Brazil can only be achieved through a programme of structural reforms aimed at driving growth and productivity. This is the finding of a report, Brazil Competitiveness and Inclusive Growth Lab, published by the World Economic Forum, which summarizes recommendations from a multistakeholder group comprising key actors and experts from the public and private sectors and academia. The report identified the main priorities for achieving higher growth and a more inclusive economy in Brazil with a view to informing the country’s economic strategy. The process was facilitated by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with the Ministry of Industry.
While Brazil’s economy is on a path to recovery, the Brazil Competitiveness and Inclusive Growth Lab report finds that over-reliance on its large domestic market and commodities exports has led to it falling behind other large emerging markets in productivity growth. Data from the Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2017-2018 suggests that important reasons for this are the high costs of doing business, the challenges for effective innovation and the relatively poor integration into global value chains of Brazil’s economy, which imports and exports considerably less than regional peers Mexico and Colombia and all the other BRICS economies.
According to the report, Brazil needs to put in place a new generation of reforms and public policies capable of addressing the high production costs, weak competence within industries, higher prices to consumers and low overall competitiveness, as all these factors lead to loss of potential wealth the country needs to raise living standards.
“The Competitiveness and Inclusive Growth Lab initiative in Brazil provides a successful example of using a multistakeholder approach to elaborate concrete and meaningful policy solutions to complex challenges. We hope the present experience will guide and promote future collaboration between the public and private sectors in Brazil,” said Børge Brende, President, Member of the Managing Board, World Economic Forum.
“Improving the business environment, deepening the integration of our economy with the rest of the world and creating a robust innovation ecosystem are the main building blocks of a more productive and competitive Brazil. This report presents a consensus roadmap to untap the potential of Brazilian economy,” said Marcos Jorge de Lima, Minister of Industry, Foreign Trade and Services of Brazil.
The recommendations of the multistakeholder group include:
Integration to global value chains: Recommendations in the report focus on improving market access, implementing trade and investment facilitation policies and improving the tax environment for trade, including a comprehensive analysis and review of Mercosur’s common external tariff (CET).
Innovation: Brazil still lags behind other leading economies in innovation. Better integration of policies and coordination between currently fragmented innovation centres would help to address this.
Public sector efficiency: In the Global Competitiveness Index, Brazil’s public sector underperforms the Latin America average, which in turn lags far behind the OECD average. Recommendations to improve efficiency centre on systematic integration of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, allowing greater facility to reallocate investments in more productive sectors. This would also generate greater accountability and trust.
Reforming the business environment: A heavy regulatory burden, infrastructure deficit and tax system have all taken a toll on Brazil’s productivity. Delivering institutional and judicial reforms to reinvigorate domestic and foreign competition are needed to address this. To this end, the report examines a number of promising initiatives already being implemented by the Brazilian government.
The Forum’s Competitiveness and Inclusive Growth Lab Brazil is an ongoing multistakeholder initiative to support the design, launch and implementation of an actionable agenda to increase competitiveness. Like previous country experiences in Colombia and Mexico, its aim is to facilitate this by helping to build multistakeholder coalitions that comprise leaders from government, business and civil society.