Nissan Motors, a Japanese automotive manufacturer, announced big news on Thursday. Nissan will invest approximately $1.5-billion US in a new plant to be built in Brazil (Globe & Mail). Earlier this week Nissan’s partner, Renault SA, also announced plans to expand an existing Brazilian plant. With this news, it is forecasted that Brazil will become the world’s third-largest automotive market by 2015, overtaking Japan (Globe & Mail). The only bigger automotive markets at that point in time would be China and the United States.
The timing of these investments by Nissan and Renault come at a good time. Currently, the Brazilian automotive market is slowing down, as illustrated by the 19.7% drop in production from September to August (Globe & Mail). This drop is in part due to the European zone crisis, as central banks have been combating inflation, trying to keep it under control. Brazil is part of a group called “BRIC”. “BRIC” is an acronym for a group of economically upcoming countries. These countries are: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. This article reinforces why Brazil is part of BRIC and gives us an indication of what we should expect from them economically in their future ventures.
