Brazil Builds Big Citrus Industry

Source: USDA, 2000

Valor Online reports: Brazilian antitrust watchdogs are favorable to a deal that would consolidate the birthplace of samba as the home of Big Orange Juice — a topic of contention in recent trade talks with the U.S., I understand. This bit of news certainly ought to send shivers through the commodities markets.

SÃO PAULO – SEAE, the bureau of economic oversight of the Brazilian Treasury, today recommended to antitrust regulator CADE the approval, without restrictions, of the international merger between Fischer, owner of Citrosuco, and Votorantim, owner of Citrovita.

In its opinion, Seae found that the deal would not negatively impact competition in the markets for fresh juice or frozen concentrate.

The deal, announced a year ago, while result in the integration of production, storage, transport, distribution and markeitng of orange juice and derivatives of the two companies, as well as planting, cultivation and related activities.

The deal still awaits the imprimatur of the SDE, the competition watchdog of the Ministry of Justice, before Cade can consider it.

The merged Citrovita and Citrosuco will possesss some 25% of the world orange juice market. If approved, it will be the largest compan of its kind in the world, with annual gross of R$ 2 bllion.

The European Union has also been studying the deal and should produce an opinion by May. An initial investigation by the EU suggested the deal would lead to a significant overlap of the two firms’ operations in Europe. The inquiry also found that if combined, the companies would assume a dominan position in the derivatives market.

Softex | Hard Sell from Intel

Softex, the software development arm of BNDES, announces:, and I translate an excerpt or two:

Intel Brasil and Softex announce the signing of a Tecnical and Scientific Cooperation agreement that establishes a mutual commitment to the Brazilian software and IT services industry, inceasing Brazil’s share of a sector that already brings inUS$ 18.5 billion and is expected to grow 25% in 2011.

In recent weeks, Intel had announced it would bypass India and China and invest half a billion dollars in an R&D center in Brazil.

The MOU establishes work standards for the training of Brazilian IT personnel in bleeding-edge technology in order to make them more competitive in the world market and making it possible to offer services and products of the highest quality to the Brazilian consumer. at the same time, innovative solutions developed in Brazil will be immediaely made available all over the world through Intel’s online store. The initiative will benefit, not just Softex members, but all organizations represented on its board, such as Assespro, Abes and Fenainfo.

That is to say, industry syndicates generally aligned with the Business Sotware Association of America and the Entertainment Software Association.

The technology press here is dominated by “coverage” of the latest U.S. releases, with little if any attention paid to the Brazilian industry.

One of the first initiatives under study is a survey of IT firms which state of the art technologies,such as parallel programming, cloud computing, mobile solutions, security and graphics computing, should be focused on first in the context of the agreement. 

New regulatory regime for Brazilian software, Mercadante says

CETI is an IT business owners association from the gaucho South. It reports on what the sector is anxious to know: Will there be adequate subsidies for IT R&D in this year’s budget, despite fiscal austerity measures that are being taken? I translate an excerpt and comment for my notes.

BRASÍLIA — Federal science and tech minister Aloizio Mercadante defends the need for a new regulatory framework for the software industry in Brazil, which still depends a great deal on the Information Technology Law. He also demonstrated sympathy for tax-breaks benefiting companies in the sector. He was cautious, however, as to when such a measure might take the form of a bill sent down to Congress.

Without speaking in much detail about the proposed new regulatory scheme — escept to say that it could take the form of an amended Informational Technology Law — Mercadante, who was taking part in the opening ceremonies of AbineeTec 2011, at Anhembi University in São Paulo, was strident about the need for short-term incentives to help the industry grow.

“I am very sympathetic to tax breaks for IT firms. This is a sector in Brazil could be doing a lot more than it is today. We have all we need to fight for a better seat at the global table”, the minister said.

Asked about the revised version of the PDP, the Productive Development Policy, Mercadante promised that the IT sector will continue to be one of the pillars of the policy. “I can guarantee you that TIC is in the new PDP, we are going to improve existing measures so that we can realize appreciable gains”, he said.

Mercandante was reluctant, however to discuss whether Science and Tech might find itself at odds with other ministries, and the Treasury in particular, which has said that any such incentives will require a quid pro quo from the industry benefitted..

The CC Wars | Defining Commons Ground in the Latifúndio of Samizdat Digital

I hereby take back the foregoing. Do not copy and remix my deathless prose without my permission and without citation of the source, and certainly without reference to the context of what I said.

Reaction to a decision by Brazil’s Ministry of Culture to withdraw Creative Commons licensing from its content and the content of other government agencies is beginning to organize its counteroffensive here, according to a note in Brasilianas.Org.

The abrupt withdrawal of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture from the Stanford- and Harvard-promoted cult of Larry Lessig came as someting of a shock, as I noted a while back.

The news site interviewed the secretary in charge of intellectual property policy at the Ministry of Culture, Antonio Grassi, recently. I translate an excerpt.

Grassi explained that one one hand you have the Internet users and on the other those opposed to the CC license who make their living from traditional royalties. He mentioned performing artists such as Carlos Lyra, Hermínio Bello de Carvalho and Aldir Blanc, who have spoken out again the CC. “These are people who survive off their royalties. I see people on  Twitter criticizing these songwriters, as though they were the representatives of an outmoded neoliberalism”.

Ironically, a lot of those critics are anonymous, having heroically abandoning the corresponding authorial duty, which is to take responsbility for what is produced. 

SEPRO-SP x SINDPD-SP | Process Servers Idled by Strike

A request from a potential client slams me face-first into a topic I have been too lazy until now to try to understand properly: Brazilian labor relations.

Members of SINDSP, the São Paulo local of FENADADOS, representing IT workers, have been engaging in work slowdowns and picketing to draw attention to their cause, which includes — according to their Web site — a variation of as much as 650% in the amount changed for a comparable service.

Brazilian labor law requires assigning a promotor to mediate negotiations and then bring a collective bargaining agreement before the regional TRT, or Labor Tribunal.  But as to a complete stoppage of IT R&D all over the sleeping “giant by its very nature,” it seems very unlikely. The national FENADADOS has yet to weigh in on the case and may be constrained by law from doing so.

A judge can decree the extent of picketing and work slowdowns a union can engage in, in fact. We are not in Kansas.

How I wish my father-iin-law, bless him, were still alive. He practiced for years in the TRT made infamous by the jailing of the judge who ordered it built, after millions in kickbacks were deftly lifted from the budget by parties who never saw the inside of a courtroom.

It actually took me some time before I realized that the SINDP were even affiliated with FENADADOS, some of whose other locals use alphabet soup such as SINDADO-DF, or data processing syndicate of the federal district.

It is interesting to be able to observe how the advertising targeting these relatively upscale professionals tends to vacation sṕots and other forms of stress relief and conspicuous consumption.

In any event, I am not working the story until I am quite sure I am going to be paid for it, but it did provide a pretext for messing about a little more with my semantic wiki.

And yes, for each entry I submit using the predefined form, an entry shows up on the category page, and logic can be brought to be on all this structured data to produce thoughts as yet unthought. In theory.

If we have the year I expect we will have, we will likely be housebound most of the time, so that by next year the wiki should contain a fair amount of background data on My Private Sambodia, culled from back blog posts and pulled hot from the presses.

1954- 2011 | Gadfly Gunned Down! Cowardice in Copacana!

Portal IMPRENSA engages in some bare-faced guilt by association in a shooting incident on the world-famous Copacbana beach.

This morning, Ricardo Gama was shot in the Copacabana region of  Rio de Janeiro’s southern zone.

Known as a harsh critic of governor Sérgio Cabral and mayor Eduardo Paes, both of the PMDB, Gama was approached by criminal in a silver car and was shot three tiems, once in the head and twice in the abdomen. According to the Web site O Repórter, he was tended to by local residents and taken to the Copa d´Or Hospital.

Among more discerning circles, Gama is known as an hysterically inflammatory Tea Party-inspired agitprop artist.

The Agência Estado reports that the blogger is undergoing tests to see whether surgery will be needed.

Amazing, that the wounding of Carlos Lacerda in 1954 by Gregorio Fortunato, the fearsome head of presidential security for Vargas, should be recycled in this way for the Internet age. 

Going APO? | A Tropicalist Tender Offer

DCI | Comércio, Indústria & Serviços reports on what it calls “a new capital raising option for small Brazilian firms.,”

A new fundraising option for small Brazilian firms is about to be put into practice, known as an Alternative Public Offer (APO).

According to Ricardo Vitale, an exec at audit and consultancy firm Baker Tilly, an [unnamed] U.S. boutique investor with an office in Brazil is scouting Brazilian firms with growth potential. It will then approach shareholders of a U.S.-listed firm with infrequently traded shares.

These U.S. investors take a stake in the Brazilian firm, which receives additional capital and also benefits from being an asset on the books of a U.S.-listed company. The transaction is considered one way to avoid the high costs of mounting an IPO in Brazil.

I had never heard of this gambit, and neither has Google. Have you?  

Folha de S. Paulo | Descent into Subjournalism?

Comunique-se‘s top headline: journalists at the Folha de S. Paulo are being hired as “administrative assistants” in order to get around existing labor laws, critics say.

This information was confirmed by the vice-president of the Senate Press Committee, journalist Fábio Marçal, who also sits on the ethics council of the federal district journalists union.

Comunique-se has seen documents proving the irregularities in hiring practices. In these papers, the newspaper alleges the practice to be a normal one. “I am not sure whether they do this to get around the law or to bust the union, but it’s absurd,” said Marçal.

The committee referred to is the body that accredts journalists to cover the Senate. The bureaucratic routine is a mile long.

Marçal said only two cases have come to light, but believes other professionals have suffered the same treatment.

Marçal also appears regularly on Rádio Guiaba.

Lincoln Macário Maia, president of the federal district union of journalists, also see the situation as absurd. “It’s absurd. It demonstrates how quick newspapers like the Folha are to denounce irregularities, but pay no attention to dirty deeds going on right under their noses,” he said.

Maia recalled the case of another company which he says engaged in the same violation. “Bloomberg also disguises the hiring of journalists as administrative personnel. These so-called “inovações,” these crude practices dressed up as models of sophistication, create precarious working conditions for journalists,” he said. Bloomberg had no comment on the accusation.

Bloomberg openings occasionally cross my virtual desktop, and are generally for traditional reportorial or editorial gigs, with an occasional “content manager” thrown in.

A much worse practice is requiring contributors to obtain a CPNJ — that is, to constitute a business firm — that is then hired on a contract basis by the publication, with tax and intellectual property ownership advantages to the publication.

Last week, federal lawmaker Paulo Pimenta (PT-RS), author of the bill that would bring back the requirement that journalists earn four-year diplomas as a condition of practicing the profession, protested the Folha’s practices. Also a journalist,he said that such irrregularities were alread being committed at any number of publication, with a tendency to increase. “This is a clear sign that removing the diploma requirement has undermined job security,” he said.

I have never quite understood this insistence on a four-year degree. Everyone I know who has done well in journalism — from CNN to the New York Times — obtained a four-year liberal arts degree and learned journalism through the traditional apprentice system: you start out writing the police blotter in West Covina and then rise to the level of your incompetence.

After all, all that is needed to be a decent journalist is a working familiarity with English and some rudimentary critical thinking skills.

But we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto, as I never tire of saying.

In other press news,

The Ongoing group, owner of the daily Brasil Econômico, is pondering whether to launch a national general newsweekly to compete with Veja (Abril), Época (Globo) and IstoÉ (Editora Três). The initial investment would be some $40 million.

That according to Relatório Reservado. Judging from the BE, however, this would be quite a stretch. The paper, while well-designed, still seems thin and understaffed relative to competitors like Valor, a Globo-Folha  JV.

All I can say is that oligopolies that rule the Brazilian media, and this is why the job market is as draconian as it is, and why the Brazilian journalist is in such a precarious position when it comes to collusion with unethical practices.

 

The Ugly American, III | Tales of Private Equity

Foreign venture capital and private equity cannot be let off their leash in public parks, according to municipal ordinance here in Brazil.

This is the impression I often get, at least, from contemplating the institutional framework in which the federal government serves as arbitrator of all deal-making and listening to the rhetoric of the powers that be. The current financial crisis is pointed to with a certain smugness of the disastrous results of letting “speculative” capital off its leash.

The Brazilian Association of Venture Capital and Private Equity: inner circle

“Productive” capital is warmly welcomed. Arbitrageurs will be shot on sight. And yet domestic investors are constantly straining at their leashes, hungry to adopt more sophisticated methods and investment instruments in a capital market in which men in smocks still yell at one another all day long.

The U.S. fund Darby — 23.5% owner of the AleSat fueling station network — gets used as a punching bag today by all and sundry in the Rio tip sheet Relatório Reseervado. The fund is said to be standing in the way of making a match with one of three attractive suitors, citing its contractual exit date of 2012. The RR believes the fund is actually counting on a higher ROI if it sells its shares together with the other partners.

AleSat, meanwhile, is said to be considering a purely tactical IPO that would dilute Darby’s bargaining power. On the down side, AleSat owners would not realize 100% of the proceeds of the sale under this scenario. And here I was just recently rereading an old college textbook on the “tragedy of the commons.”

The point is that outsiders are often resented, and speculative ventures viewed, not as the other man’s honest attempt to get the most out of the hand he has than as something shady, requiring institutional barriers to control.

These institutional arrangements are reflected in a certain genteel — or sometimes not so genteel — xenophobia. The press revels in scandals involving domestic subsidiaries of the big multinationals, often whether there are any scandalous facts to scandalize or not. 

What I Want To Be Able To Do

What I would really like to be able to do is what Placeography does — use an extension to SemanticMediaWiki to provide data entry forms informed by systems of concepts that over time evolve into a pretty good database.

Above, the data entery form for contributors to the project’s folksy contributors, who add information on interesting places and tours.

This açç seems withi the realm of my technological doable, although I am having difficulty making SemanticForms work properly with a neat little OntologyEditor released by Austrians.

My current theory is that I need to use the same version of MediaWikie used for their working demo — 1.15.3 rather than the current 1.16.1. I thought it was clever of me to dive down into the source code to find the versioning information. I majored, after all, in poetry.

Upload of the 1.15.3 files is puttering along at about 100 kbps on what is supposed to be a 10 Mbps cable broadband connection. NetVirtua sucks. Sambodia, world capital of rent-seeking behavior. It gets depressing.