The United States isn’t the only country mulling over improvements to infrastructure. For the past 20 years, an average of 2% of the Brazilian GDP was used to build new infrastructure projects.
The problem? The average in other emerging countries is about 5%.
Experts from IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) say that this imbalance between the country’s optimistic economic growth and poor infrastructural investments will go on for the next decade or so, especially in highways. Some 87% of products are transported by trucks that drive over poorly maintained roads.
Brazil is a big country; its total land mass is around 3 million square miles, slightly smaller than the United States. Brazil has some 211 million people compared to 322 million in the states, so its economy thrives on exports. From beans to beef, Brazil ranks in top ten for many of the world’s most important food commodities. But the regions where most of this production takes place are located in the west, quite far from shipping facilities on the Atlantic Ocean. According to CNA (the Brazilian National Agricultural Confederation), Brazil fails to produce an extra 4 million tons (147 million bushels) in grains due to poor transportation infrastructure.
This inefficiency in transportation ranks Brazil 56th in the Logistics Index Performance of 2019, a World Bank list that evaluates the logistical quality of 160 countries (the U.S. ranks 14th).