It's amazing to which extent the current economical condition of Belgium is not daily frontpage news. Earlier this morning the news came out that Belgian's inflation rate of March went up to 4,39% . This is the same inflation rate as the expection as Brazil for 2008 (4,42%). And it is also where the comparison between Belgium and Brasil stops:
- Brazil will grow 5% this year, Belgium at most 1,4%.
- The buying power of Brazilians is increasing. In January the minimal wage went up 9%. Moreover, with credit to GDP only at 35% (compared to 200% in the US), there is considerable room for increased consumer and corporate leverage in Brazil. In Belgium the real buying power is decreasing drastically.
- Brazil has a positive trade balance, Belgium on the other hand is struggling to keep its trade balance in the black.
- Brazil became a net creditor, the Lisboa reform program will tell you that Belgium aims for a 0,6% budget surplus in 2008 to reduce its massive piles of debt, well let me tell you: not in a thousand years is our country gonna make that.
- And on top of that, we have a freaking Belgian timebomb of an upcoming boom of elderly people which we can only support with a 70% occupation rate (10% more than today) and more productivity. A 70% occupancy rate? Which country can reach that? And more productivity? Are Belgians robots or what? Belgium is already the country in the world where the satisfaction of people with their lives is decreasing fastest. In contrast with Brazil, where that rate is increasing. I'll write more about this soon; I believe this is even more alarming than the Belgian state of the economy.
Read that news again people, Belgium will have a growth rate in 2008 no more than 1,4%. Have you got any idea how dramatic this news is when mixed with the budget problems and the alarm on our greying society?
So, what can Belgium do?
1. Become more productive? Highly unlikeable. Rather the contrary, the possibities of productivity gains in emerging countries is far bigger. Ask Arcelor, Peugeot, Coca Cola or even our own Inbev.
2. A participation rate of 70%? People working until their 68 or what? Comon.
There's only one way, really: we need to drasdtically review our immigration policies.
Belgium has 1 million people with a foreign nationality and a permit to stay. We need to make a cleare public statement what this million people bring back to the Belgium society. I can't understand why this figure hasn't been made public yet. Belgium has 415.000 muslims. How many of them are Belgian, how many of foreign nationality. I want to know what the cost/benefit balance is of those of foreign nationality (the majority). A simple question, why can't we get a simple answer?
Why do those 1 million foreigner with a stay permit get OCMW aid, health care, social housing, free Dutch classes, integration courses,...?
I have no problems with people wanting to start a future in Belgium. I did the same going to Brazil. Brazil has been grown on immigration. But in a 'survival of the fittest' way.
People who want to come to Belgium? Fine, here are the steps:
1. When you arrive, you get no health care, OCMW support, housing support, unemployment beneift. Even not when married to a Belgian.
2. When you get a job, you get health care. When you fall out of work in the first 5 years after arrival in Belgium, you get 3 months unemployment support and free health care. If you haven't found a job within 3 months, too bad.
3. Dutch lessons: ask your employer to pay for you, or learn it yourself. It's not that hard, is it?
4. Integration courses? Open your eyes and read the newspaper.
5. Out of a job longer than 12 months in a row: too bad. Either you invest 50.000 EU in Belgium and start your own business, or you go back home.
6. Nationality? When you managed to stay 10 years in Belgium and as thus proved that you contribute to our society.
Whatever your color, whatever your nationality.
You go to a a Mosque, Umbanda or Macumba temple? I couldn't care less, as long as you contribute to our society and abide our laws.
This is exactly how foreigners are treated coming to Brazil. And I wonder what's so wrong or even undemocratic about it.
Once again, I want to know what the million foreigners in Belgium contribute to our society and when the balance is negative, what the government will do to alter this negative balance drastically. With those gains the Belgian government can lower the company and labour taxes. Maybe Belgium has a future then.
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Mar 28 2008
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Mar 26 2008
I already wrote a lot on my motivation that campaigns like The Real Ray are completely insignificant, insignificant to the shareholders of Coca Cola that is. Coca Cola's growth has to come from product diversififcation (cf. the acquisition of Fuze Teas and Glaceau in the US, where consumers switch from carbonated soft drinks to other options like bottled water and teas) and growth in emerging markets. Actually, the growth in Emerging Markets is the only thing which can support the growth of Coca Cola and as a consequence it's stock price.
But even knowing that, the announcement that Coca Cola will invest 1,5 billion R$ (around 870 million US$) in Brazil in 2008 is quite stunning. Coca Cola sees Latin America as a continent with 'stunning growth potential'. They were smart enough to realise in 2001 that they needed to invest in real innovation, rather than in sensesless marketing campaigns in countries where growth is saturated.
Actually, one of the big competitors of Coca Cola in Brazil is Inbev. Coca Cola (re)launched Kuatt to try take away the enormous market position of Inbev's Guarana Antartica. That being said: Guarana Antartica is way better than Coca Cola's version. Actually, the drink is beginning an export adventure.
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Mar 25 2008
Today Brazil clocked on more than 5 million cars driving with flex engines. Most car manufacturers have a local plant in Brazil. I explained already why. Most of these cars are produced with flex engines, which run both on ethanol and gasoline. People like having a backup of gasoline; in some rare remote places, they don't have ethanol pumps. But in most states all the pumps have both ethanol and gasoline. I drove for two years with a Peugeot with flex engine; a big pleasure, especially for your wallet. Contrary to the US, the Brazilian government doesn't subsidize the production of ethanol though. The production of the Brazilian ethanol from sugarcane has a much positiver yield than the yield from mais in the US, and much more productive than the production of biodiesel from poppyseed flowers in Europe. The latter even has a net negative energy yield. Only in Europe.
PS 1,69 R$ = 0,62 € per liter ethanol alcool. The price of a liter of gasoline is currently 0,917 € in Brazil. -
Mar 25 2008
We're currently managing projects in 4 countries on 3 continents. I won't go into details, the website of WillPower Group will reveal more later this spring. We've been working hard on the reporting structures the last years; not in the least the budgettary and cashflow side. What's still lacking though is an idea on the amount of manhours spend on each project. We are now thinking of implementing an efficient timetracking system.
We've tried Harvest for a while, but it is too complex because it is based on a typical agency structure where personnel has to input ours and one central person has to sign those hours off before clients are billed. In our case, the reporting facet is more important. We've tried Fourteen Dayz today and were happily surprised. Yet, the pricing structure is somewhat odd, for our needs we would have to pay 99 US$ per month.
And then we stumbled on Tick, which integrates smoothly into our Basecamp. Anybody who has second thoughts on the matter before we sign up? -
Mar 25 2008
Portuguese is a beautiful language. Only when you start learning it, you realise how omnipresent the language is. Just listen to Zenfm for a day and count the number of songs with Portuguese lyrics. Yes, even Nelly Furtado sings in Portuguese.
But today I discovered to my great shame that the songs of Lali Puna I have been listening to for years (Tridecoder of 1999 is still my favorite album). Only this year I have been taking Portuguese courses in Belgium with a Portuguese-speaking teacher. Before I always had Brazilian teachers. And let me tell you: Brazilian Portuguese is very different from European Portuguese. This is what happens when you land as a Brazilian in Lisbon...
Brazilian Portuguese is much easier to understand than the cryptic language they speak in Portugual. Which is why probably I never discovered that Lali Puna, who lives in Munic, is singing many of her songs in Portuguese. Contratempo, Toca-Discos, Superlotado and Rapariga da Banheira are all Portuguese songs of her. Beautiful words and an amazing good pronounciation for someone with German roots... I only didn't succeed in decyphering the lyrics of "Rapariga da Banheira". In Portugal the title would translate as "Girl from the bathtub", in Brazil it would be "Hooker from the bathtub". If you can decypher the lyrics from me, I will send you 6 home-made Pasteis de Nata; no one makes them better then I do.
Learning Chines is seriously overrated, a European can never get to a level where he can conduct business meetings, write contracts or e-mails in less than 5 years. I believe you can learn Portuguese to a level where you master it perfectly, yet with a slight 'sotaque'. 330 million people speak Spanish, 220 million people speak Portuguese. The only difference is that far less people speak Portuguese as a second language than Spanish, which makes your competitive advantage far bigger when you speak Portuguese rather than Spanish. -
Mar 23 2008
In 2006 Brazil voted to give president Lula a second term as president of Brazil. The campaign Lula versus Alckmin helped me to learn a lot on Brazil and the cohesion between Brazilians. It was a fierce campaign, comparable to the Obama versus Clinton one.
But how different Americans and Brazilians deal with the nation's need of unity. When looking to the Obama-bashing video one realises how beaten-up America as a nation truly is. -
Mar 20 2008
Remember the post in which I wrote on Belgium's lack of growth potential? Here's another great event illustrating my point: E-bay is cutting jobs. Only 1% worldwide only. But the most affected countries are Belgium, Austria, Spain and the US. Now, what do those countries have in common? Right, a GDP growth of less than 2%.
Meanwhile in Brazil the market is again completely in hands of a local player: Mercado Livre; which keeps growing and hiring. -
Mar 20 2008
The Financial Times published an article on the emerging countries leaving the Western developed countries foregood behind.
But until you travel and meet management and investors in India, Mongolia, Macau, Brazil, Chile and Argentina, like the people from Motley Fool did, you don't have a clue what is really going on in these markets.
Count for yourself among the Belgian entrepeneurs: how many people visited did a trip to one of these above countries where they met with entrepeneurs and investors? We need to get out more often and broaden our horizons. -
Mar 16 2008
Brazil's retail sales rose 11,8% percent in January 2008 from January 2007, the national statistics agency said last friday. Retail, supermarket and grocery store sales, as measured by units sold, rose more than the revised 9,5% percent increase in December, the national statistic agency said today.
This in sharp contrast to the Unites States, where January 2008 retail sales went down 2% in one month compared to the December level. -
Mar 12 2008
Here's why I don't set foot on American soil anymore: 20 reasons to be ashamed to be American.
I especially liked reason 11: The Loss of Latin America:
Just eight years ago, the entire hemisphere save one pesky island was America's to squeeze, and squeeze we did, while they begged for IMF handouts that only pulled them deeper into serfdom on our manor. Then Bush came to power and launched the most inept coup in American history against Chavez. And now all of Latin America has turned into a bunch of Castro-loving fags, welching on our IMF loans, and even inviting Ahmadinejad over for siestas and nationalization ceremonies. The title of a recent McClatchy article says it all: "Farewell to the Monroe Doctrine?"
Even in their shame Americans still want to keep up their face in supposedly humor: ... welching on our IMF loans .... Time for a wake-up call and crunch the figures.
In Latin America, politicians go to hookers. In North America, politicians pretend they are fighting prostitution and pretend not going to hookers. The worst is, even the hooker won't have had a good time with Eliot Spitzer; this in contrast to the way Aécio Neves makes his 'raparigas' scream and giggle.
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