Cooperation | IPIM highlights Macau’s platform position in report

The Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM), together with the Macao Association for Brazilian Studies (AEBM), published a report on the export of Brazilian food to mainland China.

According to the report, trade between mainland China and Brazil has generally increased between 2006 and 2017, with turnover increasing from approximately USD20 billion in 2006 to approximately USD88 billion in 2017.

The research indicated that the upward trend will continue in the near future. It also reported that, in the last 40 years, Brazil has gone from being the largest importer of food products to the world’s second largest exporter of food products.

Given the growing demand from Asian countries for food products, Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply estimates that by 2030 one third of the world market’s food products will come from Brazil.

In addition, IPIM’s and AEBM’s study also showed that to February of 2018, China absorbed 20.19 percent of Brazil’s total food exports, becoming the largest export market for Brazilian food products.

The report proposed that Macau include more private companies in the China-Portuguese speaking countries’ cooperation development fund. In particular, these companies should be from the agricultural sector.

It also recommends that Macau establish itself as a distribution hub of food products from Portuguese-speaking countries, enhance e-commerce development, and train more Brazilians to be bilingual in Portuguese and Chinese. 

The document proposes that the MSAR government establish a China-Portuguese Speaking Countries Trade and Investment fund. Concurrently, more measures should be considered by both mainland China and Macau in terms of how to attract enterprises from Portuguese-speaking countries to Macau.