Transcript: Brazil market insights and opportunities
Austrade's Senior Trade Commissioner to Sao Paulo, Kym Fullgrabe, talks about the market opportunities and challenges for Australian businesses operating in the region
Transcript
Brazil is one of the largest mining provinces in the world and the second biggest miner in the world, Vale, is a dominant player. It provides great opportunities for Australia's mining exports in equipment, technology and services, so there's a range of areas there, but particularly in the services part of the mining regime. So putting in place safety regimes, training programs, advice to the mining community and to government. So right across the board in that equipment, technology and services area is where there's a lot of opportunities for Australian companies.
Brazil is one of the leading producers of oil and gas at the moment but in recent years there's been massive finds off the Rio de Janeiro coast. Petrobras is the third biggest oil and gas company in the world and through Petrobras' procurement program, which is about $240 billion over the next 5-6 years there are a range of opportunities for Australia, but particularly we think in the marine servicing aspect.
Over the next 2 1/2 years Brazil will have the World Cup and it will have the Rio Olympics in 2016. They are major infrastructure opportunities for Australian companies. There are also opportunities in sport, administration, sports equipment, sports training. Austrade has helped approximately 50 Australian companies get access and information about the Rio 2016 Olympics. Very importantly from July this year to the Olympics about 90% of the procurement contracts will be made available, so it's a very important period of time for Australian companies to be aware of the opportunities that are coming through the procurement pipeline from the Rio 2016 organisations.
Brazil is ranked as one of the most difficult countries to do business in. It takes a long time, it's complicated, it's heavily bureaucratised and some Australian companies just aren't prepared for that level of engagement to get into Brazil.
As a company you really need to get an in market presence much earlier than other destinations. So that means that you need to not only get a customer for your product or your service but you often need to get a partner, you need to get someone that you can engage with in the local marketplace. For Austrade this is one of the things that we are able to do - provide listings and provide reference points for companies coming into the market. We can provide referrals to service providers. We can provide pathways to find the information that you need that is not as readily available like on the internet as you would find in Australia.
Austrade staff are based in Sao Paulo but we cover all of Brazil, are all bilingual. There is often an expectation by Australian companies that the Brazilian counterparts will actually speak English and that's not always the case. Information is often only in Portuguese so our staff can certainly help Australian companies access the information they need to establish their business in Brazil.
In addition, Brazil recognises a badge of government very highly. Brazil itself is relatively hierarchical and through the presence of an Australian government organisation, Austrade, we were able to make introductions that perhaps we couldn't if we didn't have that badge of government.
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