Four ways to make Brazil more competitive

Over the years, Brazil has been ranked among the world’s least competitive countries by a variety of different measurements and research groups. In 2021, for example, Brazil lost two positions on the International Institute for Management Development’s (IMD) global competitiveness ranking — dropping to 59th.

While much of these disappointing results are due to worse monetary, commercial, and logistic conditions brought about by the Covid pandemic, it is also fair to say that Latin America’s largest economy is still being hurt by historical problems. Addressing some of these issues in 2023 will make Brazil more competitive.

After reviewing some of the latest competitiveness studies and talking to experts, we listed four moves that the country could make in the next year to improve its competitiveness. 

Break the cycle of government disruption

In the first week of January, President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva plans to revoke a series of decrees and resolutions made by the outgoing Jair Bolsonaro government. While this is not a new practice in Brazilian politics, it could be especially damaging in a year of global economic slowdown.

“The current government has been trying to reduce red tape in the process of opening new companies. In 2019, the Infrastructure Ministry created a situation room, setting goals for improving highways, ports, and railways based on indicators from the World Bank’s Doing Business survey. Unfortunately, the teams that took care of these issues were dissolved even before the end of the [Bolsonaro] government,” explains Carlos Arruda, a professor at the Dom Cabral Foundation, an institution that coordinates competitiveness surveys by the IMD and the World Economic Forum in Brazil.

“The new government will not have access to the memory of these efforts. These are only two examples, but this lack of continuity in government policies is one of the obstacles to...