The Brazilian government hasn’t yet decided a date for applying protection measures against Chinese textile imports.
The executive secretary of the Ministry of Development, Ivan Ramalho, said in a speech at the Brazilian Institute of Financial Executives of Rio de Janeiro (Ibef/RJ), that measures are being prepared in the Foreign Trade Chamber (Camex) to give a formal definition to this “foreign trade instrumentality.”
Some sectors of the economy, he said, have tried to get the government to do something about this situation.
Especially clothing and shoe manufacturers, “sectors in which imports have increased significantly this year, to say nothing about optical and hardware industries. The number of sectors that have expressed concern about Chinese imports is pretty big.”
The secretary pointed out, however, that a lot of this growth is the result of decisions made by Brazilian industries (especially cell phone companies), which started to buy parts and components from China “where the scale of production is large and prices are competitive.” Brazil assembles added-value export products, he said.
Chinese products are imported by 5,167 Brazilian companies. Their purchases in the first half of the year amounted to US$ 2.273 billion, a 53% increase over last year.
Imports from China represent 6.7% of what Brazil imports. China is Brazil’s fourth largest supplier.
93.6% of Brazil’s imports from China are manufactured goods. 4.9% are raw materials, and 1.5% are semi-manufactured goods.
Agência Brasil