Information and Communication Technologies and Accelerated Socioeconomic Development – A Project for Brazil
Peter T. Knight
Brazil today lacks a unifying vision of its development objectives. The country suffers from social problems rooted in a highly unequal distribution of income, education, and wealth that cuts economic competitiveness, threatens social cohesion, and undermines public safety. Brazil’s deep social and economic inequalities have only begun to be addressed, and addressing them is crucial to realize the country’s economic potential and to secure political stability.
The country is undergoing its worst political crisis since it re-democratized in the 1980s. Public frustration with crime, corruption, unresponsive political institutions, tortoise-like judicial systems, and lack of economic opportunities is rampant. There is no real consensus on development strategy among key elites or the public at large. With federal and state elections scheduled for 2006, it is the right time to promote a national debate about how to accelerate the country’s economic and social development.
Over the last 25 years, economic growth has been unsteady and averaged less than half the 5.5% rate reached over the period 1920-1980. Brazil’s growth has also been much less than that of India and China, to mention two large and complex countries. The Asian “Tigers”, Chile and Costa Rica in Latin America, and some European countries like Finland and Ireland also did better than Brazil (Table 1).
Table 1: Average Annual Percentage Rates of Growth of GDP, 1980-2003
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