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Brazil plans to emulate India & China

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CIOL Bureau
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Alberto Alerigi



SAO PAULO: Brazil's drive to increase computer software exports is beginning to show results and the government expects the sector to sell about $400 million abroad this year, four times what it exported in 2001.



Nevertheless, that is well short of the government's ambitious target to put Brazil on the global software map with the likes of China and India and notch up $2 billion in software exports per year by 2007.



"We have a perception within the government that the Brazilian software industry is big and capable, but it really only exists in Brazil," Rogerio Vianna, a coordinator at the Technology Secretariat of Brazil's Development Ministry, informed.



Nevertheless, progress is being made in software, one of the government's four business sector development priorities, along with biotechnology, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.



Vianna said the government and private sector invested at least 280 million reais ($103 million) in the software sector this year. There is some 15,000 software companies in Brazil.



About 60 percent of that investment was made by 40 companies with the help of the Prosoft financing initiative run by the state-owned National Economic and Social Development Bank, or BNDES, which was started in 1997.



Brazilian-based companies have begun looking for business opportunities in the United States, Europe, and other Latin American countries. Microsiga, which specializes in corporate software, is one case in point.



"We have to work the foreign markets now to get results in five or six years," said Jose Rogerio Luiz, the vice president of Microsiga.



Actminds, an association of Brazilian software companies operating in the financial, telecommunications, and health sectors, started operating in the United States this year. It aims to raise its overseas revenue to 40 million reais next year, from an expected 25 million reais this year.



"Ten years back there weren't any companies that knew how to export software from Brazil," said Fabio Pagano, business coordinator at Actminds and one of the founders of Softex, a group that handles promotion of Brazil's software at Brazil's Science and Technology Ministry



"Today there are a series of companies that are capable of it and are deciding to export instead of waiting to strengthen domestically," he said.



Although interest in Prosoft has been affected by the slow release of funds and cumbersome export bureaucracy, the BNDES believes its new program to help finance software purchases should help give the sector a boost.



Last week Development, Industry, and Trade Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan also showed off the Brazil's software sector to representatives of about 40 multinational companies including Volkswagen, agricultural chemicals maker Monsanto Co., and Caterpillar Inc., and Volvo.



"These companies are big brokers of our software and services outside our borders and they can strengthen their bases in Brazil at the same time," said Vanda Scartezini, the vice president of Softex.



Vianna said the companies liked what they saw.



German engineering conglomerate Siemens says it aims to export $80 million in telephone software from Brazil by 2008, and plans to triple its investment in development and research in the country to $108 million in four years.

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