A new phase of cooperation with Brazil
“A stable Brazil remains indispensable for us,” said Andreas Renschler, Chairman of the LADW, member of the Group Board of Management of Volkswagen AG and CEO of TRATON AG, from the Economic Policy Panel of this year’s German-Brazilian Economic Meeting in Cologne, before continuing to remark that the country is not only home to 1500 companies with a German background and over 20 billion euros in direct investments in local value chains, but that Brazil also offers a solid platform for the development of products and technologies, it being a place where innovation-orientation meets legal security.
Over 500 representatives from business and politics from both countries came to Cologne in June 2018. An important focus of the conference, organised by the BDI and its Brazilian partner-association CNI, was the great opportunities afforded by the digital transformation of Brazil in the expansion of bilateral relations. Opportunities for cooperation in the areas of health management, sustainable urban concepts, energy and infrastructure were closely discussed in various forums. A separate forum and over 100 matchmaking conversations targeted the promotion of cooperation between small-to-medium-sized companies.
In the Joint Economic Commission where Andreas Renschler and Thomas Bareiß, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, are the heads of delegation for the German side, the onus was on expanding cooperation in the fields of infrastructure and digitisation. The two governments also intend to launch bilateral digital dialogue at a political level. The exchange on the matter of double taxation agreements is to be revived.
The next German-Brazilian Economic Meeting will be held in September 2019 in Natal in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte.