They are finding it hard to recover, although the first months of the year were extraordinarily good for Brazilian foreign trade in airfreight. The airport of Guarulhos, a few kilometers from the city of Sao Paulo registered 7,367 tons of export cargo in January last – the highest volume for the first month of the year since 1998. February was even better: the 9,588 tons of exports that were moved remind us that this was the best February in the last 16 years.

Perhaps this apparent recovery is the only difference between the behavior of the devalued Brazilian market, ’98 model, and that displayed by the Argentine 2002 version. Apart from that, there are many coincidences.

“Economic and political instability do not favor the development of investment in the exporting sector,” says Fernando Fetter, from Lufthansa.

As to Carlos Augusto Cesar, cargo manager for Iberia in Brazil, he assures us that the fall in imports during last year, as compared to the volume registered in 2000, was the result of “the economic crisis, which brought a reduction in domestic production”. Therefore, the need to import material for local manufactures was reduced.

Both what Ferrer says and what Cesar explains could well be applied to what is happening in Argentina. In short, beyond the fact that the volumes handled by one or the other country differ in several thousand tons, the “devaluation effect” affected the two markets in the same manner.

Imports fall rapidly... and so do exports.

“Once the decision to devaluate the ‘real’ was made, the importers stopped applying for licenses to bring in superfluous goods, as well as products sensitive to price changes because of their direct link to the dollar,” reminds us Fetter.

“The effect of devaluation was immediately felt in imports, but not in exports, which, while they were supposed to increase, took their time to materialize and needed the help of other factors that would promote sales abroad,” he adds.

Four years have gone by since the devaluation in Brazil and the expectations of growth for the current year are based on the volumes of cargo registered in January and February. Of these Nelson Faria, logistics manager of the State-run Infraero at the airport of Guarulhos, says that they are “two months that are traditionally very quiet and that allows us to expect a great 2002”.

This year, Guarulhos must increase the capacity for using pallets in export cargo by 20%, while for 2003 the terminal will have an area specifically devoted to live cargo needing to stay on the airport premises for a longer period of time.

Infraero is inviting a bid for the construction of an express cargo terminal at the international airport of Viracopos, in the town of Campinas. The terminal will house the offices of the operators doing business in the airport. It is worth recalling that Viracopos moves 83% of the incoming and outgoing express cargo in Brazil.