Industrial Production
Brazil is the world's tenth biggest industrial power.

Brazil is the world's ninth biggest manufacturer of vehicles. Audi, Chrysler, Fiat, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mercedes Benz, Peugeot, Renault-Citroen, Scania, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo have factories in Brazil.

Brazil is the world's second biggest manufacturer of ceramic coating and compressors for refrigeration. The fourth biggest beer brewer. The fifth biggest manufacturer of gasoline and radios. The sixth biggest of cigarettes and CDs. The seventh biggest of refrigerators, textiles and clothing. The eighth biggest of undulated cardboard, chemical products and instant foods.

70% of Brazil's exports are manufactured goods.

Aircraft Industry
A Brazilian citizen, Santos Dumont, invented the airplane.

Embraer, the Brazilian Aeronautical Corporation, has sold 4,959 aircraft in its 27 years of existence.

Brazil is the world's third biggest manufacturer of regional service and training aircraft.

Embraer sells jets and turbo-propeller aircraft to First World countries such as the United States, France, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Luxembourg, Holland, Poland, China and Sweden.

Embraer is the world's fourth biggest manufacturer of commercial aircraft.

Information Technology
The number of computers in Brazil rose from 5.1 million in 1997 to 9.2 million in 2000.

Brazil is in seventh place in number of computers and presently is the world's biggest information technology market.

Market Data
Brazil presently has 43 million consumers and that in 2005 that number will rise to 65 million.

Brazil is the world's fifth biggest consumer market.

Brazil is in fifth place in purchasing power, just behind the United States, China, Japan and Germany.

Brazil's middle class consists of 35 million families, according to the IBGE. In other words, Brazil's middle class is 8% bigger than the population of Germany, and bigger than the sum of the populations of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Island, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Brazil's middle class is bigger than the population of France and Canada added together. It is equal to one-third of the population of the United States or 72% of the population of Japan.

Brazil is the world's third biggest franchise market, behind only the United States and Canada. The number of franchises in Brazil rose 96% between 1995 and 1999, reaching a total of 46,534 with 226,334 direct employees.

Investments
According to a survey of 1,000 businessmen responsible for 90% of all direct investments in the world, made in February 2001, by the American consultant firm, A.T. Kearney, Brazil is in third place in the preference of super-investors, behind only the United States and China.

According to economic analysts, there are a series of factors explaining why Brazil has become one of the stars of the emerging country marketplace over the last few years.

Among these factors, is economic stability, the size of the consumer market, the existence of a solid financial system, a democratic government and the fact that Brazil is one of the best positioned countries among the emerging nations in the New Economy and has the world's most competitive agricultural sector.

Brazil is Latin America's largest recipient of Japanese capital? That the Brazilian Privatization Program is the biggest in the world, with planned sales worth more than US$130 billion in telecommunications, energy, sanitation, banks and gas distributors. The steel, petrochemical and fertilizer sectors have already been privatized.

Över the last decade, the total volume of direct foreign investment in Brazil rose by 3,000%.

In 2000, the total volume of direct foreign investments in Brazil reached US$27 billion.

Environment
Countries in the northern hemisphere cannot teach countries in the southern hemisphere how to take care of their forests because, in Europe, for example, only 2% of forest remains, while in Latin America 59% of the forests are still standing.

The countries mostly responsible for global warming are the United States, with emissions of over 186 billion tons of carbon gases, the European Union countries, over 127 billion tons, and Russia, over 68 billion tons. Brazilian emissions of carbon gases are less than 7 billion tons, which is equivalent to only 4% of American emissions. These are the people who complain about Brazil.

More than 1,500 species of fish can be found in the waters of the rivers of the Amazon region.

33% of the large leaf forests of the world are in the Amazon, which contains 3,500,000 hectares of virgin forest and 750 species of trees.

The Amazon contains some 30% of the planet's genetic reserves and is the most diversified and complex ecosystem known to exist anywhere on earth.

Around 22% of the world's fresh water rivers are located in the Amazon region.

Indians
In Brazil there are 554 Indian reservations covering a total area of 946,452 square kilometers, which is equal to over 11% of the total territory of the country. 220 of those reservation areas (covering 436,400 square kilometers) have been demarcated. There are 325,652 Indians living on those reservations. The Indians belong to 227 ethnic groups and speak 170 different languages.

94,190 square kilometers, out of the total of 224,000 square kilometers which comprise the state of Roraima, are Indian reservation areas. Only 9,910 Yanomani Indians live in those areas; that is, one Indian for every 10 square kilometers.

The Indian population of Brazil has been growing at twice the rate of the rest of the population (3.2% compared to 1.4%).

Mining
Brazil is the world's second biggest producer of iron ore, the fifth biggest producer of manganese, the sixth biggest producer of primary aluminum, the seventh biggest producer of gold and the eighth biggest producer of tin.

Brazil has the world's sixth biggest reserves of iron ore.

Petrobras Oil Company, using domestic technology, holds the world's record in ultra-deep water drilling, having reached a depth of 1,700 meters.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Brazil has the world's 8th largest economy and that, in 20 years, may become the 4th largest economic power, competing for this position with France, Italy and Great Britain.

The GDP grew, on average, 4% a year from 1994 to 1996, in comparison to only 0.22% in the period of 1990 to 1993, and that, in 2000, the growth was of 4.6%.

The per capita GDP growth, which had dropped to 1.25% a year, from 1990 to 1993, increased 2.51% annually from 1994 to 1997.

According to the World Bank, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Russia will be the nations with the highest development rates in the next 25 years.

We are responsible for 42% of the actual GDP of Latin America and that the GDP of Argentina is the same as that of the interior of the state of São Paulo (excluding São Paulo city metropolitan region); and that the GDP of Chile is equal to that of Greater Campinas metropolitan area (a city in the state of São Paulo).

Of the 500 largest corporations of Latin America, 300 are Brazilian; 80 are Mexican; 60 are Argentinean; and 30 are Chilean.

Capital goods (machinery and equipment) for the construction industry, the electric energy sector and for mixed purposes expanded, in the last 4 years, 49%, 17% and 9%, respectively.

The Mercosur economic bloc - of which Brazil is a member, together with Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay - has an actual GDP of US$1.141 trillion, occupies 10% of the surface of the American continent and possesses a population of 212 million inhabitants (26% of the continent's total population).

Brazil is responsible for 30% of the earnings of the coffee sector in the world, 20% of soybean, 8.5% of chicken, 4.5% of footwear, 3.2% of steel and 2.9% of automobiles.

Supermarkets, in 1999, earned US$35 billion, with 55,300 stores, 670,000 direct jobs and 2 million indirect ones, being responsible for 85% of food supply in the country.

Between 1990 and 1999, 4,900,000 businesses were constituted, of which 2.7 million (55.1%) are considered micro and small-sized companies.

The small sized businesses produce nearly 20% of Brazil's GDP, 60% of jobs and 30% of the gross sum of the nation's industrial production.

Living conditions after the Real Plan
Inflation, for the entire year of 2000, was 4.38% and that just in March of 1983 is reached 83%.

With the end of inflation, with the subsequent increase of the purchasing power of salaries and with the greater concern of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso's administration for matters of a social nature, the real average income of those employed increased 27% in the metropolitan regions.

In the 1998-2000 period, 13 million people climbed over the poverty line, reducing the percentage of the country's poor population from 43.8% to 32.7%.

In the 6 largest cities of Brazil, the percentage of the poor dropped from 42%, in July of 1994, to 28% in January of 1996.

The average monthly income of the population rose from R$364 (US$145) in 1992 to R$472 (US$188) in 1999.

5,160,000 families began receiving running water in their homes, which raised the percentage of inhabitants with running water from 69.5% in 1992 to 81% in 1997.

The number of residences with trash collection services increased 5,260,000, that is, from 64% to 74% between 1992 and 1997.

3,650,000 families began to have electricity in their homes, rising the country's rate of homes with power supply from 88% to 93% between 1992 and 1997.

2,790,000 families had phone lines installed between 1992 and 1997.

The sewage system reached 1,640,000 additional homes, rising from 50.3% to 59.4% between 1992 and 1999.

The consumption of industrialized food products also grew from 1994 to 1997.

The consumption of chicken increased 39.9%; of beef, 27.1%; and of pork, 26.1%.

The consumption of yogurt rose 85.9%; of cheese, 51.8%; of beer, 56.8%; of soft drinks, 71.5%; and of cookies and crackers, 42.6%.

Our unemployment rates are lower than the Europeans. In Italy, for example, the jobless rate is 12% and that in Brazil it was around 7% in December 2000.

Land Reform
During the last six years, 400,000 landless rural workers have received lots and that they have been settled on an area equal to twice the size of Belgium.

In order to implement its land policy, a total of 13.2 million hectares have been expropriated or purchased by the government; an area three and a half times the size of Switzerland, or almost half the size of Italy.

Health
The Brazilian Family Health Program consists of 143,000 community health agents who visit 82 million families every month.

The Brazilian program to fight AIDS, which distributes the so-called "cocktail" free of charge, has been called one of the best programs in the world by the World Health Organization.

The Brazilian pharmaceutical products market has an annual turnover of US$8 billion.

That each year Brazil vaccinates 20 million children free of charge against various diseases, among them polio?

Between 1989 and 1998, the infant mortality rate in Brazil fell from 50.9 per thousand to 36.1 per thousand; that is, a drop of over 29% in nine years.

Life expectancy in Brazil rose from 66 in 1992, to 68 in 1999.

Agriculture and Livestock
Brazil is the largest nation in terms of arable land of the world, with 22% of the planet's arable area, and that it produced 94 million tons of grains in the 2000/2001 harvest.

We are the top world producer of coffee, oranges and sugarcane; the second largest producer of cassava, beef, chicken, beans and soybean; the third of refined sugar and corn; the fourth of grains and cocoa; the seventh of eggs and pork; the eighth of cotton and rice. We are the second largest world exporter of chicken and the fourth of pork.