Brazil judge llifts MAracana concession injunction

AP/ABC News, 05/15/2013

A judge has suspended a preliminary order that blocked the signing of a deal giving a multinational consortium the right to run Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana Stadium for 35 years.

Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht, Los Angeles-based sports and entertainment company AEG and the sports and entertainment company IMX, which is owned by Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista, won the contract Thursday.

Then a local judge ruled that the deal couldn’t be finalized ahead of a decision on the legality of the privatization process.

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Brazil’s Olympics will be fine. As for the World Cup..

Brian Winter – Reuters, 08/30/2012

Brazil is attempting an unprecedented “triple jump” of construction projects — preparing to host the 2014 World Cup soccer championship and the 2016 Olympics while also spending nearly $500 billion on highways and other infrastructure to make an economic leap forward.

The growing consensus here is that the first step could be a shaky one.

While the Summer Olympics will be almost entirely confined to Rio de Janeiro, and therefore easier to manage, the World Cup will take place in 12 cities — most of which face logistical and financial challenges to finishing stadiums and other construction on time.

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Brazil gains business and influence as it offers aid and loans in Africa

Simon Romero – The New York Times, 08/07/2012

In Mozambique, Brazil’s government isopening a plant making antiretroviral drugs to fight the AIDS epidemic. Brazil is lending $150 million to Kenya to build roads and ease congestion in the capital, Nairobi. And in Angola, West Africa’s rising oil power, a new security agreement seeks to expand the training of Angolan military personnel in Brazil.

Brazil, which has more people of African descent than any other country outside of Africa itself, is assertively raising its profile again on the continent, building on historical ties from the time of the Portuguese empire.

The array of aid projects and loans recently extended to African countries points both to Brazil’s ambitions of projecting greater influence in the developing world and to the expanding business allure of Africa, where some economies are rapidly growing even as parts of the continent still grapple with wars and famine. The charm offensive is paying off in surging trade flows between Brazil and Africa, growing to $27.6 billion in 2011 from $4.3 billion in 2002.

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A curse on hydropower projects in the Amazon?

Mario Osava – IPS, 02/24/2012

Santo Antonio hydropower station under construction in October 2010. (Mario Osava)

“Perhaps it’s the curse of Rondônia,” joked Ari Ott, referring to teething troubles with the first turbine of the Santo Antônio hydroelectric plant which was intended to kick off a new cycle of huge power projects in Brazil’s Amazon jungle region.

The enormous turbine, designed to generate 71.6 megawatts of electricity, overheated during initial tests in December and the necessary repairs delayed its coming onstream, now announced for late March, by at least three months.

Professor Ott, of the Federal University of Rondônia, said the problems “do not bode well” for the 44 turbines to be installed over a period of four years at the complex located on the Madeira river and run by the Santo Antônio Energia consortium, which is made up of Brazilian companies Odebrecht and Andrade Gutiérrez and other investors.

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Brazil eases Cuba into free market economy

UPI, 02/01/2012

Brazil is easing Cuba into the free market economy with a generous package of aid in cash and kind and joint projects that give the Latin American country a pre-eminent position in Havana’s heady mix of communism and experimental capitalism.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff appeared to be in the right place at the right time when she flew into Havana in a spirit of revolutionary camaraderie and clinched deals that secured Brazil’s status as the senior partner in a long-term, multifaceted relationship.

Current bilateral trade exceeds $642 million a year.

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Brazil leader arrives in Cuba to talk trade, ties

Jeff Franks – Reuters, 01/30/2012

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff waves during an official visit to Cuba after arriving at Havana's Jose Marti airport January 30, 2012. REUTERS/Enrique de la Osa

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff arrived in Havana on Monday for a two-day visit focused on trade, but nagged by Cuba’s ever-present human rights issues.

She was scheduled to tour the port of Mariel near Havana, where Brazil is helping finance an $800 million renovation by Brazilian engineering giant Odebrecht; witness the signing of new trade agreements with the Communist island; and meet with President Raul Castro and possibly his older brother Fidel Castro.

Rousseff was greeted at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, then driven away without addressing reporters.

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Brazil to breathe life into faded Cuban sugar sector

Esteban Israel – Reuters, 01/30/2012

Brazilian builder Odebrecht plans to produce sugar in Cuba, the company said on Monday, as looser restrictions on foreign investment in the communist island raise hopes of a recovery in the once-booming sector after decades of decline.

News of the project came on the day Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff begins a mostly ceremonial official visit to the country, which has been under communist rule since the Fidel Castro-led revolution and an ensuing U.S. trade embargo.

Odebrecht will sign a “contract of productive administration” with Cuba’s state sugar company Grupo de Administracion Empresarial del Azucar to operate the 5 de Septiembre mill in Cienfuegos province on the south coast.

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Cuba promoting special development zones with Brazilian financial support

Mercopress, 10/24/2011

Malmierca said the Mariel and port facilities development project involves 600 million dollars

Cuban Foreign Trade and Investment Minister Rodrigo Malmierca underlined the crucial role of foreign investment for the development of Cuban Special Development Zones”.

Addressing the 8th International Meeting on Foreign Trade and Investment at the Hotel Nacional in Havana, Malmierca said the Zones aim is to convince more foreign investors to engage in activities that will produce high value-added goods and service exports.

“This is an activity in which foreign investors haven’t engaged in sufficiently,” Malmierca said. “That’s why we are working on the diversification of destinations for exportable goods and services, with preference on those with the highest added value and technological content.”

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Brazil says believes Libya will respect contracts

Jeferson Ribeiro – Reuters, 08/23/2011

Brazil has received information the contracts of Brazilian companies will be respected by a new government in Libya despite the South American country’s failure to back the rebellion, the foreign minister told Reuters on Tuesday.

His comments came as rebels appeared close to ending the 42-year rule of Muammar Gaddafi and concern grew that a new government could punish companies from countries such as China and Brazil that did not throw their support behind the rebels.

“I don’t think this will happen,” Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said.

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Fears Brazilian clout could dominate Peru

Franklin Briceno – Associated Press/Miami Herald, 07/12/2011

LIMA, Peru — The towering statue of Jesus on a cliff overlooking the Pacific looks, at first glance, eerily like Rio de Janeiro’s majestic Christ the Redeemer, a famed icon of Brazil on the Atlantic side of the continent. The resemblance is not accidental.

To many Peruvians, the new statue that rises 118 feet (36 meters) has become a potent symbol of Brazil’s growing commercial and political influence in this Andean nation and across South America.

It was sculpted and assembled in Brazil and its $1 million cost footed almost entirely by the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht.

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