São Paulo – There were 1,831 exporting municipalities in Brazil last year, up 0.6% from 2011, when 1,820 cities sold products to foreign countries, according to information released this Monday (28th) by the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade.
The main exporting hubs were Angra dos Reis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, due to petroleum; the city of São Paulo; Parauapebas, in the state of Pará, due to iron ore; the city of Rio de Janeiro; and São José dos Campos, in the state of São Paulo, home to the aircraft manufacturing company Embraer’s headquarters. São Paulo and Rio are the two largest cities in the country, and both are major business centres.
São Paulo, the leading exporting state in Brazil, accounted for 26.8% of Brazil’s total export revenues in 2012. The state concentrates the most exporting municipalities in the country: 354. Next comes the state of Minas Gerais, with 262 exporting cities, followed by Rio Grande do Sul (214), Paraná (178), Santa Catarina (163), Bahia (95), Mato Grosso (75), Goiás (61), Pará (60) and Rio de Janeiro (53).
The states with the highest sales average per municipality were Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo and Pará. The three are commodity-exporting states. In the case of Rio, oil accounted for 64.2% of total exports; in Espírito Santo, iron ore accounted for 52%; and in Pará, ore accounted for 59% of exports.
On the other hand, the top importing cities in 2012 were Manaus, in the state of Amazonas, São Paulo, in the namesake state, Rio de Janeiro, in the namesake state, São Luiz, in the state of Maranhão, and São Sebastião, in the state of São Paulo. There were 1,856 importing municipalities in Brazil last year, up 1.8% from 1,823 in 2011.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
