Brazil: China contributed to the structural change of the Brazilian economy

Sao Paulo, Brazil, February 29 - China is one of the main responsible for the structural change of the Brazilian economy in recent years, said Thursday in Sao Paulo a former minister of the government of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

The economist Luis Carlos Mendonça de Barros stressed that the Chinese growth resulted in an increase "unprecedented" in prices of agricultural products and minerals, such as soybeans and iron ore, benefiting the Brazilian exports.

The increase in the price of these products contributed to the accumulation of successive positive balances in the Brazilian trade balance in recent years, said the former minister, in a lecture held Wednesday at the Consulate General of Portugal in Sao Paulo.

"With the increase in trade balances, the Central Bank of Brazil increased their purchases of dollars and contributed to the increase in international reserves Brazil, in recent years," he said.

The result was that in January of this year, the monetary authorities announced that for the first time in history, reservations Brazilian outperformed the total external debt of the country.

Mendonça de Barros stressed that the economy lives "clearly a structural change", the result of a combination of policies implemented by former President Fernando Henrique (1994-2002), as reforms and privatisation, and maintained by the current president.

Mendonça de Barros, who was Minister of Communications of the government of Fernando Henrique, said that the unprecedented growth of the Chinese economy is creating a "new world and Brazil will ago