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Considerable progress has been made in recent years in achieving macroeconomic stability and restructuring the economy. Productivity has risen since the macroeconomic stabilisation of the mid-1990s and the implementation of a series of structural reforms. But Brazil’s GDP growth performance (about 2.5% per year on average since 1995) nevertheless needs to improve to close a widening income gap relative to the OECD area. Reaping the full benefits of stabilisation in terms of faster growth will require consolidating macroeconomic adjustment, boosting innovation in the business sector and stepping up formal labour utilisation.
Consolidating macroeconomic adjustment
Fiscal policy has been on track, and public debt management has been exemplary. Monetary policy is delivering sustained disinflation, anchoring expectations. Brazil’s overarching macroeconomic challenge is to continue to reduce the public debt overhang while improving the quality of fiscal adjustment, which has so far been underpinned by revenue hikes, rather than a retrenchment of expenditure commitments. To do so, measures will be needed to arrest the increase in current spending, especially on pensions, paving the way for subsequently reducing the tax burden, once the debt-to-GDP ratio has been reduced in a sustainable manner.
Boosting innovation in the business sector
Innovation performance is improving fast. Innovation policy is beginning to focus on the potential synergies among science and technology promotion, R&D support and trade competitiveness. But R&D intensity is comparatively low by OECD standards and carried out predominantly by the government and public universities. Despite academic excellence in many niche areas, output indicators suggest that there is much scope for improvement. The key policy challenge is to boost innovation in the business sector. To this end, policies will also need to bolster human capital accumulation and to encourage university-business ventures so as to convert knowledge into productivity gains at the enterprise level.
Improving formal labour utilisation
Brazil’s labour force participation is comparable to that of the OECD for prime-age males. It is somewhat lower for females and is trending down for youths partly as a result of rising school enrolment, which is welcome. Informality is nevertheless pervasive, especially for the less educated, because the labour market is placing an increasing premium on skills. The main policy challenge is to improve formal labour utilisation. This can be achieved by fostering human capital accumulation on and off the job and mitigating policy disincentives that reduce the opportunity cost of informality.