Still a long way

Lots of student and non-Brasilian friends ask me about the Brazilian economy and its recent emergence as an economics power house. I usually tell them that we have gone a long way, but still have a million problems to solve.

This graph below (from the FT's Beyond BRIC's blog shows the composition of Brazilian exports since 2002 split between primary and manufactured goods. Much of the increase in primary goods can be explained by the commodity price boom (both in prices and Chinese demand).

This is all fine in simple monetary terms, but if Brazil ever wants to be at the frontier of development we serious need to begin developed higher value-added products (and research). Otherwise we will be the granary of the world (with good caipirinhas and samba) and that's about it.