Fast Development In Area Of Brazil

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31580, 18 January 1968, Page 3

Fast Development In Area Of Brazil

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright; RECIFE (Brazil). Brazil’s north-east problem region, for long characterised by stagnation, poverty and despair. now boasts one of the highest development rates in Latin America.

The struggle against hostile nature has been a traditional theme of north-eastern song and literature. Now the new slogan for the development of the north-east has a more optimistic ring—a factory a day. Eight years after Sudene, as the regional planning agency is known, began its task of ushering the northeast into the twentieth century, the area has an annual growth rate of 7 per cent, or about double that for the whole of Brazil in 1966. Since the 1964 revolution in Brazil, Sudene has designed its development programme to ensure that agricultural progress keeps step with rapid industrialisation. The old myth of the infertility of the soil in the north-east is being dispelled as new methods based on those used in Israel and other parts of the Middle East are employed to make once-barren lands fruitful. In March, work will begin

on two big irrigation projects covering an estimated 148,200 acres in the Sao Francisco area of Bahia and Pernambuco States and in the State of Ceara. Apart from irrigation, the projects include soil analysis, training of farmers and their workers, and the marketing of farm produce. On the Industrial site. General Euler Bentes Monteiro, the superintendent of Sudene, says that the aim is to open at least 300 factories in the north-east during 1968. “At the end of the year we hope to reach the rate of a factory a day," he says. Many industries like those for manufacturing refrigerators, stoves and other domestic appliances, have now settled successfully in the north-east and are playing a prominent part in raising the living standards of its people. A big incentive to northeast development is tile generous tax concessions offered by the Federal Government for capital investment in Qie region. President Arthur da Costa e Silva recently exempted from Federal taxes imports of new equipment for use in the north-east. Hopes are high that the new farm development projects will check the flight to the more developed areas of Brazil and that industrialisation will provide more jobs for those who prefer to live in the

north-east’s growing cities such as Recife, the fourth largest in Brazil. One of the Sudene’s major objectives is to increase the per capita income in the region and bring it into line with central and south Brazil. General Bentes Monteiro says that during Sudene’s eight years of functioning 2342 million new cruzeiros (about £360,000,000 sterling) has been invested in more than 800 industrial and agricultural projects in the area The latest figures issued by the Government’s National Agency show that 462 industrial projects have so far been approved—including 154 in Pernambuco State, 98 in Bahia, 76 in Ceara and 54 in Paraiba. Strides are also being taken in the electrification of the area and in building a modern road system.