German Companies Cross Brazil Off Future Investments
Executives of big German companies with a local presence in Brazil told Folha that the worsening conditions to do business, signalized by an increasingly complex tax system and a higher than average bureaucracy, are making their headquarters to stop consider the country for future investments. They said that these limitations to the Brazilian economic growth are making the companies consider Asia instead for future investments. "It's been a tough situation for us in the last few years. Brazil is leaving the list of future investments and losing ground to Asia," said Martin Duisberg, a DZ Bank representative. According to Duisberg, the 210 million Brazilian consumers, who gave the country a privileged position in the global map of German wagers, lost its attraction as a reason for international investments. The executives' complaints are all the same, and the reason is that, besides losing the Brazilian internal markets due to the economic recession, the companies are also having trouble exporting their goods. "For us to be able to export, we need to improve our competitiveness. There are many obstacles to this here. One is how hard it is to register technical standards and intellectual property, the other the complex tax system, " said Wolfram Anders, vice-president of the Robert Bosch group in Latin America. Anders says that Bosch has 39 employees in Brazil to deal with tax issues, while Spain, with a similar revenue, has only five.