Trading with Latin America




Trading with Latin America
On Tuesday the 2nd of October we attended a series of presentations regarding five Latin American countries, including (of course) Brazil. These five presentations were all held by the leaders of each trade department and their specific embassy of the five countries. They informed the Danish companies which attended the seminar about the golden opportunities to export their products to Latin America – but also some of the challenges included.

From Asia to Brazil
Nicolai Prytz from “Consulado Geral da Dinamarca”, told us that Danish exporters have mainly had their focus on the Asian market, but because of the recent economical growth in Brazil, eyes are now turned west. This has resulted in a five-double-raise export to Brazil from 2003 to 2011. The major export areas are food, electronics, industrial machinery, pharmaceutical products and renewable energy. The last mentioned area will be a great future challenge for
 Brazil because of the many changes in infrastructures and cities, which also is a result of the growth and gives great potential for Danish companies to compete in the field.

2020
Today Brazil has the 6th strongest economy in the world, but it is predicted to be the 5th strongest in 2020. This is mainly due to the fact that in that year the productive age and thereby also the consuming age will peak in Brazil, which will make the country even more attractive to do business with.

Difficulties
Some of the challenges include the shortage of skilled workers, high salaries and cultural differences. But regarding the cultural differences, according to Nicolai Prytz, Denmark and Brazil have more similarities than differences, so the problem is more easily solved than, for example, the corruption and poor infrastructure issues which are much bigger problems. However both have been promised to be improved in pace with the upcoming sports-events.

Business Culture
Brazilians are very serious and formal when doing business (no Hawaii shirts) and you must be flexible and understanding when they make changes in plans, meetings etc. Impatience is not recommended!
It is important for Brazilians to establish personal relations before doing business, which can sometimes be, according to Nicolai, a quite considerable task, so you are not likely to begin negotiation before a reliable relationship is built. A great advantage to that, and to build bridges between the two parts, is mastering the Portuguese language.

“YOU must build that bridge”
Vinicius De Carvalho
Written by:

Mikkel Rasmus Hansen, 1. sem., David Monteiro Paes, 1. sem. and Martin Anders Redin, 1. sem.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dinner at the Ambassador of Portugal’s Residency in Copenhagen

Image
On Monday 18 April professors Fernanda Gláucia Pinto and Georg Fischer along with students Juul van de Voort (BA) and Peter Haldborg (MA) had the pleasure of attending a dinner-buffet at the  residence  of the ambassador of Portugal, Rui Macieira ’s residency. The occasion was the visit of professor Ricardo Reis , associate dean for International Affairs of Universidade Católica de Lisboa. After a three-and-a-half hour journey from Aarhus to Copenhagen, a few cups of coffee and a beer, and finally a trip to Charlottenlund, we arrived at Rui Macieira’s residence where we were greeted by the ambassador himself. Shortly after, he thanked everyone for their participation in his welcome speech, soon followed by a short speech by professor Reis – both in European Portuguese, obviously. After the speeches it was time to enjoy the delicious food! Moments after the dinner was served people were flocking around the buffet, enjoying a mixture of Danish and Portuguese delicaci...
Read more

Porto-trip

Image
In the last week of January the 1st semester - soon to be 2nd - students were able to take a break from the stress and misery revolving their exams… Next stop: Portugal! It was a long journey to Porto, but we remained positive throughout the trip, singing joyfully along the way,  and when we finally arrived we were really psyched to get to experience the city! The first day there we were lucky enough to be given 15 degrees and sunshine, which disappointed one of the students who only brought a thick fur coat - the rest of us didn’t complain though! We went for a walk around the city, sat in the sun, drank beer and the mood was at its highest! From Monday to Friday we were given Portuguese lessons by The University of Porto, guided tours around the city and even went for a wine-tasting class, which was very interesting. And tasty... When we were not at the university, we spend our days shopping and experimenting with eating Portuguese snacks like Francesinha and Pastel de Nat...
Read more

New challenges

A new semester has just begun and along comes a whole new set of challenges, especially for the  4 th  semester students as they are off to Brazil. Back in Denmark on 2 nd semester things are humming since new and more intense courses are scheduled. One of them is a course in phonetics and phonology which is a different discipline to most of the students.  As an introduction to the course we have a visiting lecturer, Denise Kluge, from Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil.  During the first lesson she taught the importance of making our Portuguese intelligible as a result of correct pronunciation. She states that the context will not always compensate for your lacks, and even if the receiver is able to understand the meaning of your statement he or she might not be willing to compromise with it.  Pronunciation and the production of sound are therefore extremely important even at our level of education. Not least it is essential to base it on the ...
Read more