Brazil remains in penultimate place in competitiveness ranking, says CNI

The Brazilian economy remains in the penultimate place in the competitiveness ranking prepared by the National Confederation of Industry (CNI). Released on Wednesday (29), the survey analyzed 18 countries – Brazil only beats Argentina.
The CNI study compares Brazil with economies of similar characteristics. Altogether, 61 variables are evaluated. The most competitive countries are South Korea, Canada and Australia.
Cni's mapping showed that the country has the best positions in the field of technology and innovation (8th place), work (9th position) and productive structure (12th place). But it follows in the lantern in financing and in the penultimate position in taxation.
"Brazil has weaknesses in most of the nine competitiveness factors, which puts it behind economies such as Peru, Colombia, India and Indonesia," says CNI economist Samantha Cunha.
According to cni, Brazil has the highest real interest rate in the short term (8.8%) and the largest interest rate spread (32.2%). These two factors help explain the high cost of financing.
When it is taxing, according to the survey, Brazil is only ahead of Argentina. According to cni, the tax burden represents 32.3% of Brazilian GDP and 65.1% of companies' profits.
"In 2017, the tax burden in Brazil represented almost one third of GDP, being lower only than that observed in Spain (33.7%) and In Poland (33.9%), countries whose per capita income is about twice as high as Brazil, according to 2018 data," cni said.