Brazil builds bridges with Macau
06/05/2008
The Special Administrative Region of Macau has come under fire in recent days as the European Union added it to the countries against which it would apply anti-dumping measures on leather footwear imports. The allegation was that China was using the tiny territory as a trans-shipment centre for its shoes.
There was better news for Macau on May 6, however, when the executive director of the Centre for Leather Tanning Industries of Brazil (CICB), Luiz Augusto Bittencourt, told media there that, because of its location and language (Portuguese is still one of its official languages), Macau has enormous potential to make the trade of Brazilian leather with China easier.
Leather is currently one of the main products Brazil exports to China and this represents a third of total Brazilian leather exports.
Leather also accounts for half of Macau’s imports from Brazil.
In 2007 Brazil’s leather exports exceed US$2 billion for the first time, with China as the main market in terms of volume, according to CICB. This represented an increase of 17% on 2006.
In 2007, China absorbed 33% of Brazilian hides essentially for the Chinese furniture and car industries.
Brazil has the biggest herd in the world numbering 200 million heads of cattle and is also the country with the highest number of cattle slaughtered each year, of around 40 million.
A full analysis of Brazil’s leather exports appears in the May 2008 issue of World Leather.
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