Step up, please…
5 things Brazil needs to get right
- in order to move on from being an Emerging country
1. Banks needs to be coordinated
You can have a loan in one of the big banks, but you can not pay the bill in another of the big banks… so if you should have several loans or bills to pay you have to go to different banks (or somehow fix it online). WTF ? This was a big surprise for me. So imagine me waiting in one bank for 45 min (waiting time is unbelievable long) and when I finally got to talk with the cashier I found out the hard way. After that I went to the correct bank, waited forever again and at the cashier I could not pay with credit card (read: the cashier could not change from her counter??!!). So I to go to their cash machine only to find out that the machines didn’t accept foreign credit cards…. Unbelievable… we live in 2013 so come on !
2. Corruption among politicians and public worker needs to stop
Almost every week there is an episode in the news about a politician or highly ranked public worker court up in corruption. And we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. What amazes me the most is that these people can continue, at some level, or just change job even after being convicted of a corruption crime… Politicians can, if they get caught, resign that specific position and then also the punishment and run for an another public position – and get it ! Unbelievable…
You have a famous politician who is wanted by Interpol for dirty money in an American bank (money he stole from public projects), but as long as he stays in Brazil he will not be handed over to US or get his punishment. In fact the politician is famous here for publicly announcing that he accept bribes and steals money from public projects – but defends himself with that he at least gets the public projects done… People are still voting him into public office anyway – Why?
These days there are discussions in Federal Supreme Court of whether some dirty politicians (who already is convicted in 2012) should be able to get a rerun in Supreme Court (even though its a Supreme) – due to some technicalities. Even though they got sentenced last year they are yet to step into jail… Come on here !
3. Product development needs to increase
Brazil, and President Dilma Rousseff, enjoy some very high import taxes on almost all products. Resulting in lots of products being produced in the country, beneficial the economy – but not all the countries that wants to export into Brazil. All those goods are very expensive. This is good for Brazilian economy but not good for the people interested in safety, environmental correct production and newest developments.
This is seen very clearly in the automobile industry. All imported cars get +100% taxes… and at the same time some of these models are being produced inside Brazil, by the big producers, as Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat and others (even more to come). The big problem is that even though Brazil produces the same model as in Europe or Asia the quality is much lower and so is the security development.
According to this article thousands of Brazilians die due the bad quality and 4 out of 5 most popular cars simply failing crash test. I know from being a smaller car (Citroen C3) that it is common to have the cheapest model without airbags or ABS (anti-blocking-brakes). At the same time in Europe you have smaller cars 4-6 or even 8 airbags – all with some kind of anti block brakes. But another problem is simply the construction that technically is too bad quality. It is so easy to make the new cars so much more safe – demand higher quality (comes with higher education of workers though).
4. Get the most intelligent people out of public service
Once hired in the public sector you will receive a high salary, membership of private clubs (for low fee), health security, dental insurance, lifetime employment and great pension schemes (though pension schemes has been adjusted lower). Previously there was even more corruption than now and one way to put an end to this, was to hold competition, so the best qualified would get the job – no personal judgement involved. As this in general sounds good there are some very bad side effects.
You have the smartest people (in general) in the public sector that doesn’t produce anything for the country – they might make business easier, more equal opportunities, helping poor people etc. But you also have people with the highest intelligent, many with little motivation to work, locked up in an office not producing anything, but mostly talking, discussing and maybe help. As we have seen some many have to much time to steal money from the people.
The way out has to be fewer people, being able to fire low efficient workers, better control (maybe even external and publicly) with salary and money, and move all these intelligent people out and enhance production and development throughout the country.
5. Higher minimum wage
The minimum wage here is R$ 678 (with 13 salaries per year) but its still way to low (resulting in very poor people and high crime – and desperate crimes that is. In the capital, Brasilia, you have a lot of people working in the public sector so the city is very different, due to the unnatural amount of well paid employees so the prices inside the city is very high too. This means that all the people on the low minimum salary has to live outside the city. Strange really. Working for the public sector you will receive a much higher salary, p
