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In a few days, Brazil will turn 40 years in which its economy grows below the world rate. In the period, this disparity was never greater than in this decade about to end.
From 2011 to 2020, the country became poorer in absolute and relative terms. Its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) will not have grown more than 2.2%, considering a projection of a fall of 4.5% this year – due to the impact of Covid-19 – made by the Ministry of Economy.
In the same period, according to calculations by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), global GDP will have grown by 30.5%, even with a decline similar to that of Brazil in 2020.
The rate of 2.2% in a decade, which would be weak even as an annual result, is much lower than the growth of the Brazilian population in these ten years, estimated by the IBGE at 8.7%. In other words, the average national income per capita has dropped.
In addition to the statistics, the figure translates into an evident loss of well-being of the population, measurable in indices such as unemployment and poverty.
It also means that the country has distanced itself more profoundly from global standards of wealth and development.
Not even in the decade that first earned the epithet of lost, the 1980s, was there such a difference. At that time, the Brazilian product expanded by 16.9% and that of the planet by 37.9%.
In 2011-20, Brazil lost ground among emerging and poor economies, whose expected growth is 47.6%. It also underperformed rich countries, which have an estimated peak of 11.5%.
The comparison with nations that had a similar per capita income at the beginning of the decade is also not favorable.
European Serbia, Asian Thailand and African Gabon had, in 2010, a GDP per capita slightly lower than that of Brazil, considering the purchasing power of national currencies. Today, all three, especially the first two, have a good advantage.
Brazil is certainly not the only case of economic failure in the decade, but there are not many worse-off examples.
Among the most important economies, neighboring Argentina will close the period with negative GDP growth. In Europe, Greece was home to the most notorious episode of depression, but other nations, such as Italy, Spain and Portugal, also suffered.
In addition to some cases of retraction in smaller countries, tragedies in Venezuela and countries that are or have been through wars are also reported.
The Brazilian failure in the decade draws more attention due to the contrast with the relative success of the country in the previous ten years, which led, in 2009, to the famous cover of the British magazine The Economist that showed the take off of Christ the Redeemer.
From 2001 to 2010, the national GDP grew 43.5%, not very different from the rate observed in the world, 46.9%. Only in the last year of the period was there an expansion of 7.5%, the highest since 1980.
What seemed like a promising scenario – all the more so because the discovery of large volumes of oil in the pre-salt layer was celebrated at the time – would gradually turn into one of deterioration.
Starting in 2009, the country expanded public spending and credit to face the effects of the global financial crisis caused by the bankruptcy of the US bank Lehman Brothers.
What began as a necessity soon turned into political expediency, when then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) worked successfully to make Dilma Rousseff his successor.
With Dilma, the ideological conviction in the intervention of the State for growth began to guide economic policy.
The natural slowdown in GDP in 2011 – the announced expansion of 2.7%, which in the future would be revised to a less frustrating 4% – contributed to the government providing the economy with increasing doses of spending, fiscal benefits and monetary stimulus.
The results, however, were meager, while the worsening of public accounts, offset by accounting maneuvers, and the precarious control of inflation, based on the repression of public rates, became more evident.
The prostration of the activity led to a political crisis after Dilma’s re-election, denying the crisis and the need for hard adjustments, which would be attempted in the second term. There was a deep recession and an impeachment of the president.
A period of slow and bumpy recovery followed between 2017 and 2019, under the governments of Michel Temer (MDB) and Jair Bolsonaro, with per capita income never returning to the level of the beginning of the decade.
The fragility of the National Treasury accounts, without resources for investments and new social programs, and the instability of the political framework limited the possibilities of a vigorous recovery.
The opportunity to avoid another lost decade has faded with the recessive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The country may record the largest annual decline ever measured since the 20th century.
According to the most recent projection of the Ministry of Economy, the Brazilian GDP will close the year and the decade at R $ 7.221 trillion, which corresponds to R $ 34.101 for each resident of the country.
In adjusted values, the national per capita income reached R $ 36,245 at the end of 2010. In ten years, therefore, there would have been a decrease of 5.9%.
This is an impoverishment similar to or even greater than that of the 1981-1990 decade, with the exception that GDP was later calculated with a different methodology and that population growth occurred at higher rates.
Between the two periods, the degree of organization of the economy makes an important difference. The 1980s were marked by the inflationary explosion and the unavailability of dollars due to the external debt crisis.
