São Paulo – Machinery exports from Brazil dropped 12.1% year-on-year in January, the Brazilian Machinery and Equipment Industry Association (Abimaq) reported this Wednesday (24). Foreign sale revenues amounted to USD 509 million and the association said in a press release that the export-friendly exchange rate is yet to reflect on industry performance.
Abimaq numbers show that oil and renewable energy machinery exports dropped the most, at 67%. The second-poorest performance was in agricultural machinery, with sales down 43.2%, and the third worst export result was logistics and civil construction machinery, with a 37.3% drop.
Foreign sales of infrastructure and base industry machinery dropped 23.8%, and capital goods industry components dropped 10.7%. Foreign sales climbed for consumer goods manufacturing machinery, up 366%, and for processing industry machinery, up 54.1%.
The leading buying region was Latin America, with USD 173.11 million in imports, followed by China at USD 98.7%, Europe at USD 95.6 million and the United States at USD 71.9 million. Barring China, sales to all parts of the world declined.
The Brazilian capital goods industry also saw net revenues drop in January to BRL 4.1 billion (USD 1 billion), down 35% from January 2015. “The result attests not only to weak domestic investment no período (jan15/jan16), which was down 55.9%, but also to the lack of dynamism on the foreign market,” Abimaq’s press release reads.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
