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Will The Real Brazil Please Stand Up

“Brazil is the country of the future; and will always remain so…”
Charles de Gaulle, President of France

“Wow! Brazil is big…”
George W. Bush, President of the USA

As the country beds down at the start of Dilma Rousseff’s second term as President, which Brazil will dominate for the rest of this decade, and possibly beyond?

There are two Brazils; the first comprises the world’s fifth largest both by size and population and its seventh largest economy, both nominally and by purchasing power parity. The country can only be described using a number of superlatives, underpinned by a wide range of improving and expanding indicators, and a generous and increasingly important resource base.…

Eating Chicken Nuggets Just Got Safer

It’s the world’s largest restaurant chain, serving 27 million customers daily so there’s a lot McDonald’s gets right. Yet over the past five years, the stock has sharply underperformed the S&P 500 (+50 percent vs +82 percent) and an examination of the sales and profit growth prospects for the company, vital indicators in the cyclical consumer sector show McDonald’s lagging in all key areas. Long-term growth estimates for the company at 6.3 percent are almost half that for its peer group (which includes Yum! Brands Inc and Wendy’s), while McDonald’s revenue growth for the current year is forecast at -5.6 percent vs.…

Transforming Agriculture into a Sustainable Enterprise

The Green Revolution of the 1960’s and 70’s was a turning point in modern agriculture across developing countries. It increased productivity worldwide, saving an estimated 1 billion from starvation.

This was achieved by the rapid development of transformational farm management techniques, including the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to achieve higher yields. Yet a generation has passed and we are only now beginning to understand the impact on the environment, health and agricultural production in the long term.

Conventional farming techniques now use excessive amounts of water, energy, and chemicals, often with little regard to long-term adverse effects. The environmental costs of this practice is mounting with irrigation systems pumping water from reservoirs faster than they are being recharged, toxic herbicides and insecticides accumulating in ground and surface waters, and chemical fertilizers disrupting ecosystems and getting into our food chain.…

Rowing Against the Tide of Global Monetary Easing

Since his arrival in office on January 2015, Finance Minister Joaquim Levy has spearheaded a series of austerity measures to prevent an investment rating downgrade on the Brazil’s sovereign debt. This comes at a time when Brazil’s annualized inflation rate is expected to reach its highest level in twelve years.

During her first four-year term, Dilma Rousseff’s government sought to control rising inflation by suppressing energy and fuel costs for consumers while municipal and state governments refused to raise prices. Shift to January 2015 and Brazil’s inflation rate rose to 7.1 percent due to an average 8.5% increase in food, electricity and public transport prices in the country.…

Will Global Agricultural Production Grow Alongside Rising Demand?

If mankind is to increase agricultural production by 2050 to meet the requirements of a rising population, we will need to continue to increase the yield per acre achieved in farming, perfect innovative and organic methodologies and reduce food waste. Understanding the optimum development process for any given crop and developing new technologies that increases yields will place us in a more favorable position in meeting the rising demand for food.

A Rising Population…

Global food production will need to increase by 70% by 2050 to feed a population forecasted to reach up to 10.9 billion. In light of the unprecedented challenges to food security being faced today, including that of a shifting climate, the limited expansion of agricultural land and slowing yield expansion, the FAO has outlined recommendations for the preservation of our global environment.…

Shedding Light on Neem’s Medicinal and Agricultural Applications

The National Research Council in the United States has placed the neem tree in their top ten list of plants to be studied and used for the sustainable development of the human race and the planet. With mankind’s pervasive development of resistance to antibiotics in healthcare and the use of synthetic and toxic pesticides in agriculture, organic products are urgently needed for their positive environmental impact.

Neem’s Cytoadhesive Properties A Source of Hope for Cancer, HIV and Malaria Treatment

Researchers at a cancer institute in India have highlighted neem leaves’ ability to inhibit the growth of tumor cells. Instead of targeting the cancer cells directly, the protein – Neem Leaf Glycoprotein (NLGP) – modulates cells that are responsible for providing immunity to the body present within the tumor environment and its peripheral system.…

State Banker Aldemir Bendine Appointed to Resurrect Petrobras

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is putting her faith in state bank executive Aldemir Bendine to restore the fortunes of Brazil’s national oil company, which is struggling with low profitability at a time of a weak oil price, a heavily geared balance sheet and a major corruption scandal. The former Banco do Brasil Chief Executive Officer has replaced Maria das Gracas Foester, who resigned after failing to establish consensus for the level of write-downs necessary in the wake of the scandal.

Recent investigations by the Brazilian Federal police, dubbed Operation Car Wash, has found that Petrobas took bribes from construction companies and funnelled the funds to parties of the ruling coalition.…

A Shift in Mexico’s Fiscal Policy Bolsters Optimism for 2015

Mexico has embarked on a bold package of structural reform to break free from the three decades of slow growth, low productivity, pervasive labour market informality and high-income inequality. 2015 will see the results of the ‘Pacto Por Mexico’ agreement, where major structural measures have been legislated to improve economic competition, education, energy, the financial sector, labour, infrastructure, telecommunications and the tax system. If fully implemented, these reforms are forecasted to increase annual trend per capita GDP growth by as much as one percentage point over the next ten years.

Going for Growth in 2015 – Reforms Made by the ‘Pacto Por Mexico’ Agreement

Reducing barriers to foreign direct investment: The wireless, fixed-line, satellite, media, insurance and leasing sectors have been opened more substantially to FDI in 2014.

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It’s Not All Bad – The US is Back On Top

Let’s start on a positive note – the only major economy to have their forecasts upgraded in the past year was the United States. In 2015, Fathom expects GDP growth of 4.1 percent; if delivered this would be the best annual rate in more than a decade. Why? Against the backdrop of cheaper oil and a tighter labor market, private consumption expanded by 4.3 percent in the final quarter of 2014, its fastest rate of growth since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis. The labor market has enjoyed its longest run of net job creation since payroll data was first collected in 1939; combined with underlying productivity growth, this will start to put upward pressure on national incomes.…

A Match Made in Trade Heaven

Senior representatives of the Latin American and the Caribbean (CELAC) states travelled to Beijing early in January to “consolidate the ever-lasting friendship” between these two global economic powerhouses. A new framework was proposed to increase bilateral trade to US$500 billion, and raise Chinese investment into Latin America to US$250 billion, with both targets to be achieved by 2020. If reached, the latter figure would represent a 150 percent increase on the current level.

Though unprecedented, targeting this level of investment and financial partnership has been over a decade in the making. Between 2000 and 2009, China increased bilateral trade with Latin America from US$13 billion to $120 billion, a nine-fold increase.…

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