At an event this evening, Brazil’s Central Bank President Henrique Meirelles and GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt will share the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce’s Person of the Year Award, which each year honors one Brazilian and one American leader for helping to forge closer ties between the two nations. For the occasion, we asked Joao Geraldo Ferreira, GE CEO of Brazil, to write a guest post on GE’s latest work in the country.
 Joao Geraldo Ferreira |
GE has been an industrial partner in Brazil for 90 years, playing an increasingly crucial role in helping propel the country’s economic, infrastructure, and energy growth. We’ve been excited to watch GE Brazil grow at an average rate of 12 percent for the last five years, and the opportunities are expanding by the minute. And now Brazil will be host to GE’s fifth Global Research Center, which will offer local research and development services for our major Brazilian industry partners, including Petrobras, the fourth largest energy company in the world; Embraer, the main jet engine manufacturer in Brazil; VALE, the country’s largest mining company and the second largest mining company in the world; and countless other partners throughout Latin America. Locating our next Global Research Center in Brazil is not only about creating jobs and bringing more investments into Brazil. It’s a major part of our “company to country” initiative.
GE is making global efforts to provide more local decision-making, products, and investment opportunities within the countries it serves, and Brazil is a prime example. Later this year, we’ll be opening our first healthcare plant in South America in the city of Contagem, Minas Gerais, where we already have lighting and transportation plants. The plant will initially produce X-ray and mammography equipment, working first to address local demands, then Central and South American needs, and also further export needs as demand and supply capabilities grow.
 On the right track: In an op-ed published today in Valor Economico, the main business paper in Brazil, Jeff Immelt said, “I am very optimistic about the partnerships that the U.S. and Brazil are building as Brazil assumes its place on the global stage.” GE’s presence in Brazil stretches back to 1919 — and it was GE that helped light Brazil’s famous “Christ the Redeemer” statute in the 1930s. Pictured above is the GE Transportation plant in Contagem. |
Believe it or not, we’re also gearing up for the 2016 Summer Olympics, which will be held in Rio de Janeiro. We hope to bring our expertise to the Games in a highly localized way. We were sponsors of the Olympic Games in Beijing two years ago and are sponsoring the Games in London in 2012. While we’ll certainly bring our experience from those two partnerships to bear in Brazil, we hope to develop a partnership in Rio de Janeiro that is inherently Brazilian. Our idea is to create a “Sustainable City,” where we work with government here on the state and federal levels to provide clean technology solutions for energy, water, and healthcare. We’re already meeting with government officials in Rio on a weekly basis to talk about how we can bring sustainable solutions to the Olympics and leave a legacy for the city when the Games are over.
Brazil is one of the countries (Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, for example, are others) where we are pursuing this “company to country” approach. GE may be a global company with global reach, but we also want to be local for the local people. Brazil, which accounts for some 40 percent of our Latin American revenue, is going to be a major proving ground for that initiative.
* Read more stories about Brazil on GE Reports
* Read more Global Research stories on GE Reports
* Read an English version of Jeff Immelt’s op-ed in Valor Economico