Brazil papayas. The industry – from automobiles, steel and petrochemicals to computers, aircraft and consumer durables – accounted for 30.8% of the gross domestic product. Industry is highly concentrated in metropolitan São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Campinas, Porto Alegre, and Belo Horizonte. Brazil has become the fourth largest car market in the world. Major export products include aircraft, electrical equipment, automobiles, ethanol, textiles, footwear, iron ore, steel, coffee, orange juice, soybeans and corned beef. In total, Brazil ranks 23rd worldwide in value of exports. Brazil pegged its currency, the real, to the U.S. dollar in 1994. However, after the East Asian
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,