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.

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