HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT FOR BRAZIL - 1996

At this point, the Report deals with the strategic challenges of development. It points out that a new pattern of development is emerging that reflects an acknowledgement of contemporary tendencies towards the globalisation of markets, economic liberalisation, and the formation of regional trade blocs.

In the economic field, the consolidation of this new model requires a productive transformation and industrial restructuring that confers greater competitivity to the country’s productive sector and the consolidation of macro-economic stability.

However, in order that this new growth model can translate effectively into greater human development, the country should deal with a set of challenges involving a better interpersonal and inter-regional distribution of the fruits of growth, the reduction of poverty and the quest for higher living standards, the perfecting of institutions and of democratic practices simultaneously with the reform of the State, and concerns with environmental preservation.

This process presupposes an interaction between the State and private enterprise as well as an economic, social and political pluralism.

The Report goes on to trace possible scenarios for development in the next decades, noting that there is a set of favourable factors: the demographic perspectives; the tendencies of the urbanisation process; the business and technological training already acquired; and the dimension of the internal market.

Between the four possible routes, depending on the greater or lesser success of the economic policy, the Report indicates one that is the most probable and which projects an expansion of the GDP from 4.5% a year for the period 1995/2,000, from 6.4% for the period 2,000/2,100, and of 5.7% between 1995 and 2,000.

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