Brazil's international trade behind in business ranking

The World Bank launched this week the 2018 edition of the Doing Business survey, which assesses the business environment in different countries. In it, countries are evaluated on different topics and, for us involved with logistics, the most important of them is the topic of International Trade. Despite the slight improvement in the score in International Trade, Brazil occupies the position of 139 in the ranking that brings together 190 countries.

Figure 1 – Image of the port of Santos

Source: Disclosure

Even in the scenario of Latin America, the Brazilian situation is not the best. Despite being one of the largest economies in the region, the country is below the Latin American average in the ease of trade. Latin America is led by Mexico, which occupies the 63rd position in the International Trade ranking, followed by Chile, in the 68th position.

In analyzing the ease of trade, the World Bank evaluates both the bureaucracy in the import and export process and the costs involved in these transactions. Thus, the time taken to clear the products, the time it takes for the cargo to travel within the national territory between the storage point and the export/import point, the number of documents required and the costs involved in all processes are analysed.

Compared to developed economies, the time to collect import documents in Brazil is still very long, around two days, compared to most European countries, where it takes a few hours to solve the problem. The costs in Brazil are also very high, requiring almost US$ 1 thousand for the clearance of an imported container in the country from its arrival at the port, including the formalities in the various agencies involved, against less than US$ 200 in the United States, for example.

Logically, Brazil's position remains worrying. And the scenario is even more gloomy in view of the recent news of a drop in public investment to the lowest level in 15 years. Lacking transport infrastructure, Brazil sees works being stopped due to lack of public and private resources, with companies returning concessions due to difficulty in carrying out the planned investments, either because of the financial crisis, or because they are involved in corruption scandals.

In the middle of the black clouds, however, there is a ray of sunlight, even if seen from afar. The digitization of import and export documentation and the creation of a single shipping channel for companies has already led to a reduction in bureaucracy, with companies making just one submission and sending the documents to all the agencies involved in the process. However, as you can see, this is still little for what we need to do to improve the export and import process in Brazil.