Economy of Brazil compared to only US$2 billion per year last decade, remarkable growth. The agricultural sector, locally called the "agronegócio" (agro-business), has also been remarkably dynamic: for two decades this sector has kept Brazil among the most highly productive countries in areas related to the rural sector. The agricultural sector and the mining sector also supported trade surpluses which allowed for massive currency gains (rebound) and external debt paydown. Due to a downturn in Western economies, Brazil found itself in 2010 trying to halt the appreciation of the real. Data from the Asian Development Bank and the Tax Justice Network show the
Economic history of Brazil the early 1970s, the performance of the export sector was undermined by an overvalued currency. With the trade balance under pressure, the oil shock led to a sharply higher import bill. Brazil opted to continue a high-growth policy. Furthermore, it adopted renewed strategies of import substitution industrialization and of economic diversification. In the mid-1970s, the regime began implementing a development plan aimed at increasing self-sufficiency in many sectors and creating new comparative advantages. Its main components were to promote import substitution of basic industrial inputs (steel, aluminium, fertilizers, petrochemicals), to make large investments in the expansion of the economic infrastructure,