According to the president at the CICB, Luiz Bittencourt, in a press release issued by the organization, the performance of Brazilian exports is the result of a change in the outline of the production chain.
Production increasingly has been focusing on markets that operate with higher value-added products, such as the automobile and furniture segments, which answer to more than 60% of production, the remainder of which goes to the artefacts, clothing, and shoes sectors.
According to the CICB, leather is already among the leading items in the Brazilian export basket and, according to Bittencourt, foreign sales of the commodity should end the year at US$ 2.2 billion, representing an increase of 22% over last year.
Up until October, exports of leather have already surpassed foreign sales of shoes, which stood at US$ 1.6 billion, and equaled approximately half the exported value of bovine meat, which totaled US$ 3.7 billion.
Foreign sales of higher value-added leather answered to 51% of revenues from Brazilian exports of the commodity. The average price of bovine leather was US$ 64.28, over US$ 49.53 during the same period of last year.
The leading buyer countries for Brazilian leather until October were Italy, with US$ 510 million in imports; China, at US$ 417 million; Hong Kong, at US$ 204 million; and the United States, at US$ 193 million.
Brazilian leather exports to Saudi Arabia leaped in the first ten months of the current year. They rose up from US$ 12,130 from January to October 2006 to US$ 133,450 in the same period of 2007, representing a 1000% increase. Total shipments of the product to the Arab country stood at 16 tons.
Another Arab country that import Brazilian leather is Tunisia, which purchased US$ 1.38 million, representing a 14% increase over the first ten months of 2006. Morocco, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates are also on the list of buyers of the Brazilian commodity, but exports to those countries have decreased in comparison with last year.
In October, Brazilian leather exports totaled US$ 199 million, a 16.3% rise over the same month of last year. The leading Brazilian exporter states were São Paulo, in the Southeast, Rio Grande do Sul, in the South, Ceará, in the Northeast and Paraná, in the South.
Anba