Brazil’s economy overtakes UK to become the sixth largest in the world

File photo of Ambassador Miguel Magalhaes (center) flanked by PM Douglas (left) and Deputy PM Condor (right) at the 2010 opening of the Embassy of Brazil headquarters

ZIZ News…March 9, 2012 — According to several sources, including the British National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), Brazil overtook the UK in 2011 as the sixth largest economy in the world.

Using the International Monetary Fund’s figures at current exchange rates, Brazil’s economy output was $2.52 trillion US dollars in 2011. The UK has now the seventh largest with $2.48 trillion. Brazil is also poised to claim France’s spot in a couple of years to become the fifth largest economy in the world.

In a release, Brazil’s resident Ambassador in St. Kitts Nevis, Miguel Magalhaes stated that Brazil has developed a large and sophisticated industry.

Brazilian companies design and manufacture about 40% of the world’s fleet of regional jetliners (45-90 seats), the fifth largest manufacturer of motor vehicles in the world, and it has developed a unique technology that allows cars to use any mixture of gasoline and ethanol from sugarcane.

In the last 20 years Brazil has become one of the world’s top three producers of soya, coffee, tropical fruits, sugarcane, and poultry and has the world’s largest commercial cattle herd (50% larger than that of the US) at 170 million animals.

With substantial oil and gas reserves continuing to be discovered off Brazil’s coast in recent years, the country is now the world’s eighth largest oil producer, and it will soon enter the top five.

Poverty has declined substantially in recent years, especially in the past decade, during which the poorest 50% saw their incomes go up by 68%, according to the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a think tank in Rio De Janeiro.