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A partir da distribuição de frequência apresentada na tabela e considerando que “K” é um número real, o valor da média, da mediana e da moda da distribuição é, respectivamente:
Ainda com base nas informações do texto, julgue os itens a seguir.
I Fixando-se a probabilidade de ocorrer um erro do tipo I em 0,025, é correto afirmar que há evidências estatísticas contra a hipótese nula.
II Fixando-se a probabilidade de ocorrer um erro do tipo I em um valor superior a 0,025, a hipótese nula não seria rejeitada.
III O nível descritivo do teste (p-valor) é um valor inferior a 0,024.
A quantidade de itens certos é igual a
Considere as asserções a seguir. A média amostral é sempre um estimador não viciado para a média de uma população.
PORQUE
O erro padrão do estimador não viciado para a média de uma população é maior do que a variância da população.
Analisando-se as asserções, conclui-se que
As questões de nos 41 a 46 são referentes aos resultados do ENADE 2006, disponíveis em www.inep.gov.br.
Responda às questões de nos 41 a 43 com base nos percentuais das respostas de alunos de uma área específica de determinada Instituição de Ensino Superior (IES), participantes do ENADE 2006, a algumas questões do questionário socioeconômico relativas aos hábitos de leitura.
A questão de número 23 do questionário socioeconômico envolve uma variável do tipo
How to dig out from the information avalanche
Majority of workers feel overwhelmed by deluge of data, survey finds
By Eve Tahmincioglu
updated 8:18 p.m. ET March 16, 2008
Don’t expect Shaun Osher, the CEO of Core Group
Marketing in New York, to answer your e-mail right away.
He has stopped responding to e-mails every minute and
only checks his e-mail account twice a day. He also started
5 turning off his BlackBerry during meetings.
This tactic has made him so much more productive
that earlier this year he held a meeting with his staff of 50
and “strongly suggested” that they stop relying so heavily
on e-mail and actually start calling clients on the phone.
10 And, he requested his employees put cell phones and
PDAs on silent mode during meetings, as well as curtail
the common practice of cc-ing everybody when sending
out an e-mail. “There was so much redundancy, so much
unnecessary work,” he explains. “One person could handle
15 an issue that should take two minutes, but when an email
goes out and five people get cc-ed, then everybody
responds to it and there’s a snowball effect.”
It’s not that Osher has anything against technology. In
fact, he loves it. The problem is, last year he realized he
20 was inundated with so many e-mails and so much
information in general that he began to experience data
overload. “In the beginning, e-mail and all this data was a
great phenomenon, revolutionizing what we do. But the
pendulum has swung way too much to the other side,” he
25 maintains. “We’re less productive.”
Osher isn’t the only one out there under a data
avalanche. Thanks to technological innovations, you can
be talking to a customer on your cell phone, answering a
LinkedIn invitation on your laptop, and responding to email
30 on your PDA all at the same time. Besides, during
tough economic times, who will want to miss any
information when your job could be on the line if you indulge
in the luxury of being offline? Turns out, seven out of 10
office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by
35 information in the workplace, and more than two in five
say they are headed for a data “breaking point,” according
to a recently released Workplace Productivity Survey.
Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets,
says there are a host of reasons we’re all on the information
40 brink: “exponential growth of the size of the information
‘haystack,’ the immensity and immediacy of digital
communications, and the fact that professionals are not
being provided with sufficient tools and training to help
them keep pace with the growing information burden.”
45 ___ Ellen Kossek, a professor from Michigan State, believes
we are less productive in this age of 24-7 technology, and
our multitasking mentality has spawned a “not-mentallypresent”
society. “We’re becoming an attention-deficit
disorder society switching back and forth like crazy,”
50 Kossek says. “We’re connected all the time. We’re
working on planes, in coffee shops, working on the
weekends. Work is very seductive, but yet we’re actually
less effective.”
The key to getting your head above the data flood,
55 according to workplace experts, is managing and reducing
the information you’re bombarded with.
© 2008 MSNBC Interactive - (slightly adapted)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23636252/
Check the only alternative that presents a statement that is INCONSISTENT with the arguments and reasoning introduced in the text you have read.
Mark the sentence in which the idea introduced by the word in bold type is correctly described.
How to dig out from the information avalanche
Majority of workers feel overwhelmed by deluge of data, survey finds
By Eve Tahmincioglu
updated 8:18 p.m. ET March 16, 2008
Don’t expect Shaun Osher, the CEO of Core Group
Marketing in New York, to answer your e-mail right away.
He has stopped responding to e-mails every minute and
only checks his e-mail account twice a day. He also started
5 turning off his BlackBerry during meetings.
This tactic has made him so much more productive
that earlier this year he held a meeting with his staff of 50
and “strongly suggested” that they stop relying so heavily
on e-mail and actually start calling clients on the phone.
10 And, he requested his employees put cell phones and
PDAs on silent mode during meetings, as well as curtail
the common practice of cc-ing everybody when sending
out an e-mail. “There was so much redundancy, so much
unnecessary work,” he explains. “One person could handle
15 an issue that should take two minutes, but when an email
goes out and five people get cc-ed, then everybody
responds to it and there’s a snowball effect.”
It’s not that Osher has anything against technology. In
fact, he loves it. The problem is, last year he realized he
20 was inundated with so many e-mails and so much
information in general that he began to experience data
overload. “In the beginning, e-mail and all this data was a
great phenomenon, revolutionizing what we do. But the
pendulum has swung way too much to the other side,” he
25 maintains. “We’re less productive.”
Osher isn’t the only one out there under a data
avalanche. Thanks to technological innovations, you can
be talking to a customer on your cell phone, answering a
LinkedIn invitation on your laptop, and responding to email
30 on your PDA all at the same time. Besides, during
tough economic times, who will want to miss any
information when your job could be on the line if you indulge
in the luxury of being offline? Turns out, seven out of 10
office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by
35 information in the workplace, and more than two in five
say they are headed for a data “breaking point,” according
to a recently released Workplace Productivity Survey.
Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets,
says there are a host of reasons we’re all on the information
40 brink: “exponential growth of the size of the information
‘haystack,’ the immensity and immediacy of digital
communications, and the fact that professionals are not
being provided with sufficient tools and training to help
them keep pace with the growing information burden.”
45 ___ Ellen Kossek, a professor from Michigan State, believes
we are less productive in this age of 24-7 technology, and
our multitasking mentality has spawned a “not-mentallypresent”
society. “We’re becoming an attention-deficit
disorder society switching back and forth like crazy,”
50 Kossek says. “We’re connected all the time. We’re
working on planes, in coffee shops, working on the
weekends. Work is very seductive, but yet we’re actually
less effective.”
The key to getting your head above the data flood,
55 according to workplace experts, is managing and reducing
the information you’re bombarded with.
© 2008 MSNBC Interactive - (slightly adapted)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23636252/
Which option describes accurately the meaning relationship between the pairs of words?
In "...your job could be on the line if you indulge in the luxury of being offline?" (lines 32-33) the expressions 'on the line' and 'offline', respectively, mean
How to dig out from the information avalanche
Majority of workers feel overwhelmed by deluge of data, survey finds
By Eve Tahmincioglu
updated 8:18 p.m. ET March 16, 2008
Don’t expect Shaun Osher, the CEO of Core Group
Marketing in New York, to answer your e-mail right away.
He has stopped responding to e-mails every minute and
only checks his e-mail account twice a day. He also started
5 turning off his BlackBerry during meetings.
This tactic has made him so much more productive
that earlier this year he held a meeting with his staff of 50
and “strongly suggested” that they stop relying so heavily
on e-mail and actually start calling clients on the phone.
10 And, he requested his employees put cell phones and
PDAs on silent mode during meetings, as well as curtail
the common practice of cc-ing everybody when sending
out an e-mail. “There was so much redundancy, so much
unnecessary work,” he explains. “One person could handle
15 an issue that should take two minutes, but when an email
goes out and five people get cc-ed, then everybody
responds to it and there’s a snowball effect.”
It’s not that Osher has anything against technology. In
fact, he loves it. The problem is, last year he realized he
20 was inundated with so many e-mails and so much
information in general that he began to experience data
overload. “In the beginning, e-mail and all this data was a
great phenomenon, revolutionizing what we do. But the
pendulum has swung way too much to the other side,” he
25 maintains. “We’re less productive.”
Osher isn’t the only one out there under a data
avalanche. Thanks to technological innovations, you can
be talking to a customer on your cell phone, answering a
LinkedIn invitation on your laptop, and responding to email
30 on your PDA all at the same time. Besides, during
tough economic times, who will want to miss any
information when your job could be on the line if you indulge
in the luxury of being offline? Turns out, seven out of 10
office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by
35 information in the workplace, and more than two in five
say they are headed for a data “breaking point,” according
to a recently released Workplace Productivity Survey.
Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets,
says there are a host of reasons we’re all on the information
40 brink: “exponential growth of the size of the information
‘haystack,’ the immensity and immediacy of digital
communications, and the fact that professionals are not
being provided with sufficient tools and training to help
them keep pace with the growing information burden.”
45 ___ Ellen Kossek, a professor from Michigan State, believes
we are less productive in this age of 24-7 technology, and
our multitasking mentality has spawned a “not-mentallypresent”
society. “We’re becoming an attention-deficit
disorder society switching back and forth like crazy,”
50 Kossek says. “We’re connected all the time. We’re
working on planes, in coffee shops, working on the
weekends. Work is very seductive, but yet we’re actually
less effective.”
The key to getting your head above the data flood,
55 according to workplace experts, is managing and reducing
the information you’re bombarded with.
© 2008 MSNBC Interactive - (slightly adapted)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23636252/
When Shaun Osher affirms that "… the pendulum has swung way too much to the other side," (lines 23-24), he means that
In "One person could handle an issue that should take two minutes," (lines 14-15), "handle" means "to deal with". Mark the sentence in which the word "handle" is used in the same way.
How to dig out from the information avalanche
Majority of workers feel overwhelmed by deluge of data, survey finds
By Eve Tahmincioglu
updated 8:18 p.m. ET March 16, 2008
Don’t expect Shaun Osher, the CEO of Core Group
Marketing in New York, to answer your e-mail right away.
He has stopped responding to e-mails every minute and
only checks his e-mail account twice a day. He also started
5 turning off his BlackBerry during meetings.
This tactic has made him so much more productive
that earlier this year he held a meeting with his staff of 50
and “strongly suggested” that they stop relying so heavily
on e-mail and actually start calling clients on the phone.
10 And, he requested his employees put cell phones and
PDAs on silent mode during meetings, as well as curtail
the common practice of cc-ing everybody when sending
out an e-mail. “There was so much redundancy, so much
unnecessary work,” he explains. “One person could handle
15 an issue that should take two minutes, but when an email
goes out and five people get cc-ed, then everybody
responds to it and there’s a snowball effect.”
It’s not that Osher has anything against technology. In
fact, he loves it. The problem is, last year he realized he
20 was inundated with so many e-mails and so much
information in general that he began to experience data
overload. “In the beginning, e-mail and all this data was a
great phenomenon, revolutionizing what we do. But the
pendulum has swung way too much to the other side,” he
25 maintains. “We’re less productive.”
Osher isn’t the only one out there under a data
avalanche. Thanks to technological innovations, you can
be talking to a customer on your cell phone, answering a
LinkedIn invitation on your laptop, and responding to email
30 on your PDA all at the same time. Besides, during
tough economic times, who will want to miss any
information when your job could be on the line if you indulge
in the luxury of being offline? Turns out, seven out of 10
office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by
35 information in the workplace, and more than two in five
say they are headed for a data “breaking point,” according
to a recently released Workplace Productivity Survey.
Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets,
says there are a host of reasons we’re all on the information
40 brink: “exponential growth of the size of the information
‘haystack,’ the immensity and immediacy of digital
communications, and the fact that professionals are not
being provided with sufficient tools and training to help
them keep pace with the growing information burden.”
45 ___ Ellen Kossek, a professor from Michigan State, believes
we are less productive in this age of 24-7 technology, and
our multitasking mentality has spawned a “not-mentallypresent”
society. “We’re becoming an attention-deficit
disorder society switching back and forth like crazy,”
50 Kossek says. “We’re connected all the time. We’re
working on planes, in coffee shops, working on the
weekends. Work is very seductive, but yet we’re actually
less effective.”
The key to getting your head above the data flood,
55 according to workplace experts, is managing and reducing
the information you’re bombarded with.
© 2008 MSNBC Interactive - (slightly adapted)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23636252/
The purpose of this article is to
Considere o plano em blocos completos aleatorizados, com resposta dada por Yij, onde o índice i se refere ao i-ésimo tratamento e o índice j se refere ao j-ésimo bloco, com i = 1,2,...,t e j = 1,2,...,b.
Com respeito a tal plano, analise as afirmativas abaixo.
I - As variáveis aleatórias Yij são independentes e identicamente distribuídas.
II - A soma de quadrados de tratamentos é sempre menor em comparação ao experimento não considerando blocagem.
III - O quadrado médio de tratamentos é sempre menor em comparação ao experimento não considerando blocagem.
IV - A estimativa da variância do erro, dada pelo quadrado médio do erro, é sempre menor em comparação ao experimento não considerando blocagem.
Está correto APENAS o que se afirma em
Para comparar médias de vários tratamentos em uma população que não siga distribuição normal, o teste adequado é o
Considere um intervalo de confiança de 90%, simétrico, para a média μ de uma população com distribuição normal [5; 15].
No teste de hipótese H0: μ = 0 x H1: μ ≠ 0, tem-se que a hipótese nula de H0
Um supermercado recebe fruta tropical proveniente de dois fornecedores, A e B. Enquanto A fornece caixas de 20 frutos, B fornece caixas maiores com 100 frutos cada uma. Alguns dos frutos, sem qualidade, têm peso inferior ao peso estabelecido para que seja considerado aceitável pelo supermercado.
Com vistas a comparar a qualidade dos frutos fornecidos por A e B foi feito um estudo, obtendo-se os seguintes dados:
Fornecedor A
|
Número de frutos sem qualidade |
Número de caixas |
0 |
25 |
1 |
36 |
2 |
19 |
3 |
11 |
4 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
Fornecedor B
|
Número de frutos sem qualidade |
Número de caixas |
0 - 4 |
17 |
5 - 9 |
49 |
10 - 14 |
22 |
15 - 19 |
8 |
20 - 24 |
3 |
25 - 29 |
1 |
A média de frutos sem qualidade, por caixa, para os fornecedores A e B é, respectivamente,
Estatísticas do Departamento de Trânsito sobre o envolvimento de motoristas em acidentes com até 2 anos de habilitação indicam que o seguinte modelo pode ser adotado, ou seja, a variável aleatória X representa o número de acidentes e assume valores 0, 1, 2, 3 e 4:
Número de Acidentes (X) |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
P(X = x) |
0,3 |
0,2 |
0,1 |
0,1 |
0,3 |
O valor esperado e o desvio padrão da variável aleatória X são, respectivamente,
Text II
Off the Deep End in Brazil
Gerald Herbert
With crude still hemorrhaging into the Gulf of
Mexico, deep-water drilling might seem taboo just
now. In fact, extreme oil will likely be the new normal.
Despite the gulf tragedy, the quest for oil and gas in
5 the most difficult places on the planet is just getting
underway. Prospecting proceeds apace in the ultra-
deepwater reserves off the coasts of Ghana and
Nigeria, the sulfur-laden depths of the Black Sea, and
the tar sands of Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin. Brazil’s
10 Petrobras, which already controls a quarter of global
deepwater operations, is just starting to plumb its 9 to
15 billion barrels of proven reserves buried some four
miles below the Atlantic.
The reason is simple: after a century and a
15 half of breakneck oil prospecting, the easy stuff is
history. Blistering growth in emerging nations has
turned the power grid upside down. India and China
will consume 28 percent of global energy by 2030,
triple the juice they required in 1990. China is set to
20 overtake the U.S. in energy consumption by 2014.
And now that the Great Recession is easing, the
earth’s hoard of conventional oil is waning even
faster. The International Energy Agency reckons the
world will need to find 65 million additional barrels a
25 day by 2030. If the U.S. offshore-drilling moratorium
drags on, look for idled rigs heading to other shores.
Available in:
<http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/13/off-the-deep-end-in-brazil.html>
Retrieved on: June 19, 2011.
In Text II, Herbert illustrates the possibility of “...idled rigs heading to other shores.” (line 26) EXCEPT when he mentions
Text II
Off the Deep End in Brazil
Gerald Herbert
With crude still hemorrhaging into the Gulf of
Mexico, deep-water drilling might seem taboo just
now. In fact, extreme oil will likely be the new normal.
Despite the gulf tragedy, the quest for oil and gas in
5 the most difficult places on the planet is just getting
underway. Prospecting proceeds apace in the ultra-
deepwater reserves off the coasts of Ghana and
Nigeria, the sulfur-laden depths of the Black Sea, and
the tar sands of Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin. Brazil’s
10 Petrobras, which already controls a quarter of global
deepwater operations, is just starting to plumb its 9 to
15 billion barrels of proven reserves buried some four
miles below the Atlantic.
The reason is simple: after a century and a
15 half of breakneck oil prospecting, the easy stuff is
history. Blistering growth in emerging nations has
turned the power grid upside down. India and China
will consume 28 percent of global energy by 2030,
triple the juice they required in 1990. China is set to
20 overtake the U.S. in energy consumption by 2014.
And now that the Great Recession is easing, the
earth’s hoard of conventional oil is waning even
faster. The International Energy Agency reckons the
world will need to find 65 million additional barrels a
25 day by 2030. If the U.S. offshore-drilling moratorium
drags on, look for idled rigs heading to other shores.
Available in:
<http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/13/off-the-deep-end-in-brazil.html>
Retrieved on: June 19, 2011.
According to Text II, in spite of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico,
Text I
Brazil: Platform for growth
By Joe Leahy
On the Cidade de Angra dos Reis oil platform,
surrounded by the deep blue South Atlantic, a
Petrobras engineer turns on a tap and watches black
liquid flow into a beaker.
5____It looks and smells like ordinary crude oil.
Nevertheless, for Brazil, this represents something
much more spectacular. Pumped by the national oil
company from “pre-salt” deposits – so-called because
they lie beneath 2,000m of salt – 300km off the coast
10 of Rio de Janeiro, it is some of the first commercial
oil to flow from the country’s giant new deepwater
discoveries.
Already estimated to contain 50bn barrels, and
with much of the area still to be fully explored, the
15 fields contain the world’s largest known offshore oil
deposits. In one step, Brazil could jump up the world
rankings of national oil reserves and production, from
15th to fifth. So great are the discoveries, and the
investment required to exploit them, that they have
20 the potential to transform the country – for good or for ill.
Having seen out booms and busts before,
Brazilians are hoping that this time “the country
of the future” will at last realise its full economic
potential. The hope is that the discoveries will provide
25 a nation already rich in renewable energy with an
embarrassment of resources with which to pursue the
goal of becoming a US of the south.
The danger for Brazil, if it fails to manage this
windfall wisely, is of falling victim to “Dutch disease”.
30 The economic malaise is named after the Netherlands
in the 1970s, where the manufacturing sector withered
after its currency strengthened on the back of a large
gas field discovery combined with rising energy prices.
Even worse, Brazil could suffer a more severe
35 form of the disease, the “oil curse”, whereby nations
rich in natural resources – Nigeria and Venezuela, for
example – grow addicted to the money that flows from
them.
Petrobras chief executive says neither the
40 company nor the country’s oil industry has so far
been big enough to become a government cash cow.
But with the new discoveries, which stretch across an
800km belt off the coast of south-eastern Brazil, this is
going to change. The oil industry could grow from about
45 10 per cent of GDP to up to 25 per cent in the coming
decades, analysts say. To curb any negative effects,
Brazil is trying to support domestic manufacturing
by increasing “local content” requirements in the oil
industry.
50____Without a “firm local content policy”, says
Petrobras CEO, Dutch disease and the oil curse will
take hold. However, “if we have a firm and successful
local content policy, no – because other sectors in the
economy are going to grow as fast as Petrobras”.
55___The other long-term dividend Brazil is seeking
from the discoveries is in research and development
(R&D). Extracting oil from beneath a layer of salt at
great depth, hundreds of kilometres from the coast, is
so challenging that Brazilian engineers see it as a new
60 frontier. If they can perfect this, they can lead the way
in other markets with similar geology, such as Africa.
For its part, Petrobras is spending $800m-$900m
a year over the next five years on R&D, and has
invested $700m in the expansion of its research
65 centre.
Ultimately, Brazil’s ability to avoid Dutch disease
will depend not just on how the money from the oil
is spent. The country is the world’s second biggest
exporter of iron ore. It is the largest exporter of beef.
70 It is also the biggest producer of sugar, coffee and
orange juice, and the second-largest producer of soya
beans.
Exports of these commodities are already driving
up the exchange rate before the new oil fields have
75 fully come on stream, making it harder for Brazilian
exporters of manufactured goods. Industrial production
has faltered in recent months, with manufacturers
blaming the trend on a flood of cheap Chinese-made
imports.
80____“Brazil has everything that China doesn’t and it’s
natural that, as China continues to grow, it’s just going
to be starved for those resources,” says Harvard’s
Prof Rogoff. “At some level Brazil doesn’t just want
to be exporting natural resources – it wants a more
85 diversified economy. There are going to be some
rising tensions over that.”
Adapted from Financial Times - March 15 2011 22:54. Available in:
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fa11320c-4f48-11e0-9038-00144feab49a,_i_email=y.html>
Retrieved on: June 17, 2011.
Text II
Off the Deep End in Brazil
Gerald Herbert
With crude still hemorrhaging into the Gulf of
Mexico, deep-water drilling might seem taboo just
now. In fact, extreme oil will likely be the new normal.
Despite the gulf tragedy, the quest for oil and gas in
5 the most difficult places on the planet is just getting
underway. Prospecting proceeds apace in the ultra-
deepwater reserves off the coasts of Ghana and
Nigeria, the sulfur-laden depths of the Black Sea, and
the tar sands of Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin. Brazil’s
10 Petrobras, which already controls a quarter of global
deepwater operations, is just starting to plumb its 9 to
15 billion barrels of proven reserves buried some four
miles below the Atlantic.
The reason is simple: after a century and a
15 half of breakneck oil prospecting, the easy stuff is
history. Blistering growth in emerging nations has
turned the power grid upside down. India and China
will consume 28 percent of global energy by 2030,
triple the juice they required in 1990. China is set to
20 overtake the U.S. in energy consumption by 2014.
And now that the Great Recession is easing, the
earth’s hoard of conventional oil is waning even
faster. The International Energy Agency reckons the
world will need to find 65 million additional barrels a
25 day by 2030. If the U.S. offshore-drilling moratorium
drags on, look for idled rigs heading to other shores.
Available in:
<http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/13/off-the-deep-end-in-brazil.html>
Retrieved on: June 19, 2011.
Comparing Texts I and II,
Text I
Brazil: Platform for growth
By Joe Leahy
On the Cidade de Angra dos Reis oil platform,
surrounded by the deep blue South Atlantic, a
Petrobras engineer turns on a tap and watches black
liquid flow into a beaker.
5____It looks and smells like ordinary crude oil.
Nevertheless, for Brazil, this represents something
much more spectacular. Pumped by the national oil
company from “pre-salt” deposits – so-called because
they lie beneath 2,000m of salt – 300km off the coast
10 of Rio de Janeiro, it is some of the first commercial
oil to flow from the country’s giant new deepwater
discoveries.
Already estimated to contain 50bn barrels, and
with much of the area still to be fully explored, the
15 fields contain the world’s largest known offshore oil
deposits. In one step, Brazil could jump up the world
rankings of national oil reserves and production, from
15th to fifth. So great are the discoveries, and the
investment required to exploit them, that they have
20 the potential to transform the country – for good or for ill.
Having seen out booms and busts before,
Brazilians are hoping that this time “the country
of the future” will at last realise its full economic
potential. The hope is that the discoveries will provide
25 a nation already rich in renewable energy with an
embarrassment of resources with which to pursue the
goal of becoming a US of the south.
The danger for Brazil, if it fails to manage this
windfall wisely, is of falling victim to “Dutch disease”.
30 The economic malaise is named after the Netherlands
in the 1970s, where the manufacturing sector withered
after its currency strengthened on the back of a large
gas field discovery combined with rising energy prices.
Even worse, Brazil could suffer a more severe
35 form of the disease, the “oil curse”, whereby nations
rich in natural resources – Nigeria and Venezuela, for
example – grow addicted to the money that flows from
them.
Petrobras chief executive says neither the
40 company nor the country’s oil industry has so far
been big enough to become a government cash cow.
But with the new discoveries, which stretch across an
800km belt off the coast of south-eastern Brazil, this is
going to change. The oil industry could grow from about
45 10 per cent of GDP to up to 25 per cent in the coming
decades, analysts say. To curb any negative effects,
Brazil is trying to support domestic manufacturing
by increasing “local content” requirements in the oil
industry.
50____Without a “firm local content policy”, says
Petrobras CEO, Dutch disease and the oil curse will
take hold. However, “if we have a firm and successful
local content policy, no – because other sectors in the
economy are going to grow as fast as Petrobras”.
55___The other long-term dividend Brazil is seeking
from the discoveries is in research and development
(R&D). Extracting oil from beneath a layer of salt at
great depth, hundreds of kilometres from the coast, is
so challenging that Brazilian engineers see it as a new
60 frontier. If they can perfect this, they can lead the way
in other markets with similar geology, such as Africa.
For its part, Petrobras is spending $800m-$900m
a year over the next five years on R&D, and has
invested $700m in the expansion of its research
65 centre.
Ultimately, Brazil’s ability to avoid Dutch disease
will depend not just on how the money from the oil
is spent. The country is the world’s second biggest
exporter of iron ore. It is the largest exporter of beef.
70 It is also the biggest producer of sugar, coffee and
orange juice, and the second-largest producer of soya
beans.
Exports of these commodities are already driving
up the exchange rate before the new oil fields have
75 fully come on stream, making it harder for Brazilian
exporters of manufactured goods. Industrial production
has faltered in recent months, with manufacturers
blaming the trend on a flood of cheap Chinese-made
imports.
80____“Brazil has everything that China doesn’t and it’s
natural that, as China continues to grow, it’s just going
to be starved for those resources,” says Harvard’s
Prof Rogoff. “At some level Brazil doesn’t just want
to be exporting natural resources – it wants a more
85 diversified economy. There are going to be some
rising tensions over that.”
Adapted from Financial Times - March 15 2011 22:54. Available in:
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fa11320c-4f48-11e0-9038-00144feab49a,_i_email=y.html>
Retrieved on: June 17, 2011.
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