Determinantes da demanda por importação de arroz do Mercosul pelo Brasil

Abstract

Determinants of brazilian rice imports demand from Mercosur The rice, one of the main cereals produced and consumed in Brazil, has been one of the most agricultural products imported by Brazil, mainly in the 1990s. The economic market opened in 1990, the monetary stabilization plan (Plano Real) in 1994 and the creation of Mercosur in 1995 allowed an increment in imports of goods and services in Brazil. Therefore, imports of rice in the country rose to a significant level throughout the 1990s. Uruguay and Argentina became the largest suppliers of the product for the Brazilian market. Even though, after the devaluation of the Brazilian currency (Real) in 1999, Brazil retained considerable levels of product imports from the Mercosur. In order to understand the factors that contributed to an increased demand of imported product, this thesis described the scenery of rice production in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, from 1989 to 2008. It analyses their production chains, prices in domestic markets, and participation in international rice´s market. Concomitant to this, it was proposed an economic model that examines the relationship in the Mercosur trade, assuming that Brazilian imports of rice are a result of excess domestic demand for this grain. Econometric model Vector Auto-regressive-structural VAR was applied to analyze the contemporary relations of the quantities of rice imported by Brazil in Mercosur, the domestic price of rice in Brazil, the import price of rice in Mercosur, the Brazilian domestic income and the effective exchange rate in Brazil. Results are expressed from an array of contemporary relations, from decomposition variance of the prediction error and from the impulse-response function of the variables on contemporary shocks. The results showed a strong relationship between rice imports with the domestic rice price, and relative importance with Brazilian exchange rate in explaining the pattern of importing rice. Another point is the significant participation of the imports price in explaining domestic price. The variable quantity of rice imports was sensitive for a positive shock of 1% in the domestic price, indicating an immediate increment close to 3% in the quantity imported. This variable was also sensitive to a shock in the imported price, which showed a reduction by half (0.5%) in the quantity imported. A shock in the exchange rate reduces by 2% in the quantity imported. The shocks in the domestic and import price of rice indicated a causality relationship to one over the other, suggesting increases on both, indicating an existence of integrated rice market between Brazil and Mercosur.