The Brazilian Retail Report examines the long-term potential of the local consumer market, but flags shortterm concerns about the impact on Brazil's economic outlook of persistently high indebtedness and rising labour market uncertainty.
The report examines how best to maximise returns in the Brazilian retail market while minimising investment risk, and also explores the impact of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis and declining Chinese import demand on the Brazilian consumer and on the ability of producers and exporters to realise returns in the short term.
The report also analyses the growth and risk management strategies being employed by the leading players in the Brazilian retail sector, as they seek to maximise the growth opportunities offered by the local market.
Brazilian per capita consumer spending is forecast to increase by 22% between 2013 and 2017, compared with a regional growth average of 15%. The country comes first in BMI's LatAm Retail Risk/Reward Ratings, although it underperforms slightly for Risk.
Among all retail categories, consumer electronics will be the outperformer through to 2017 in growth terms, with sales forecast to increase by almost 47% between 2013 and 2017, from US$40.01bn to US$58.61bn. The consumer electronics sector offers growth potential in key digital products groups such as computers, digital cameras (which both have less than 30% penetration) and LCD TV sets.
In the competitive arena, BMI sees upside potential in government proposals to remove certain taxes for tablet computer manufacturers to bring production into the country, which are already attracting interest from the likes of Foxconn, Huawei and ZTE.
Over the last quarter, BMI has revised the following forecasts/views:
- Following Brazil's unexpectedly-weak Q312 growth data, which showed that both fixed investment and the banking sector continue to drag down economic activity, BMI has revised down its average real GDP growth estimate for 2012 to 1.0% (from 1.5% previously). That said, we anticipate a significant pickup in economic activity in 2013, as we expect a backlog of infrastructure projects and a modest uptick in private consumption will boost growth to 3.5% in 2013, a slight downward revision from our previous 3.7% forecast, as we expect a construction backlog to bolster growth, and continued stimulus measures to modestly boost activity in the consumer and manufacturing sectors. We estimate private consumption contributed 0.8 percentage points (pp) to headline real GDP growth in 2012, implying real growth of 1.3%.
- BMI expects private consumption to pick up modestly in 2013, growing by 3.2% in real terms, and contributing a more significant 2.1pp to headline growth, as fiscal and monetary stimulus increasingly feed through to the domestic market. However, we highlight that weaker credit growth will help keep private consumption growth off its recent highs.