DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: Theme Parks to Balance External Accounts

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 28 1998 (IPS) - Theme parks are mushrooming in Brazil, fostered by a government keen on seeing some of the billions spent by Brazilians abroad remain in the country.

Some 1.3 billion dollars are to be invested over the next two years in the construction of theme parks, according to the Ministry ofIdustry and Trade, with the aim of attracting some of the 400,00 Brazilians who head to Disney World and other parks in the United States every year.

The governmental National Bank of Economic and Social Development began to finance such projects when demand for recreational alternatives began to climb after the national currency was stabilised in 1994. More than 4.4 billion dollars are in the pipeline for turism and recreational projects in general.

That investment is part of the government’s effort to reduce the country’s external current accounts deficit, which totalled 33.84 billion dollars in 1997, equivalent to 4.2 percent of the gross domestic product.

Tourism accounted for 4.37 billion dollars of that total, 21.8 percent higher than the 1996 figure. Travel abroad cost 5.44 billion dollars last year, while visitors to Brazil left behind a mere 1.06 billion dollars.

The tourism sector has steadily lost foreign exchange since 1990. Since then, expenditures rose sevenfold while revenues fell 12.7 percent, according to Central Bank figures.

Brazilians are the third largest group of visitors to Disney World today. They are also the main users of local attractions, said Maria Lucia Romero, the director of Enchanted Land, a theme park which opened last month in Rio de Janeiro before it was even completed.

Enchanted Land, Sao Paulo’s Playcenter and the Beto Carrero in the southern state of Santa Catarina form a triangle of large parks already operating in Brazil, expected to draw a combined total of seven million visitors this year.

Enchanted Land will have a capacity of 25,000 visitors a day, and marketing studies indicate that it will attract some 3.5 million people a year, “perhaps by 1999,” said Romero.

She added that many people in a position to visit Disney World “will also come to Enchanted Land, and foreign tourists who travel to Rio de Janeiro will stay a day longer to visit our park.”

Local economic authorities see the development of internal tourism as one way to stem the outflow of hard currency, and have adopted several measures, such as lowering the cost of domestic flights.

The overvaluation of Brazil’s urrency, the real, with respect to the dollar, and the fact that domestic flights are proportionately more expensive than international travel have encouraged people to go abroad.

To offset those disadvantages, the embarkation fee for travel abroad was raised 50 percent, and credit card purchases were prohibited outside the country.

But those are only short-term measures, while enhancing Brazil’s tourist attractions in order to compete at an international level could provide a permanent solution.

Since last year, the National Bank of Economic and Social Development has financed a number of tourism and recreational projects with over 1.2 billion dollars in extended soft loans. Enchanted Land obtained a 50 million dollar credit.

Playcenter, the country’s oldest theme park, plans to build six new parks in Brazil and one in Buenos Aires over the next five years. The original Playcenter, which opened 25 years ago in Sao Paulo, has been visited by 50 million people, according to the company’s communications manager, Esther Alvarenga. The group also has a mobile fair that tours Brazil and neighbouring countries.

Wet ‘n Wild from Florida, USA, is currently building five water parks in Brazil, complete with pools with simulated waves, giant slides and rides. Several other water parks are already functioning.

The world’s 800 major water parks – 500 in the United States alone – take in combined annual revenues of around 1.5 billion dollars.

Theme parks are a lucrative global business that move around 16 billion dollars a year, according to the international theme park association. In the United States, the birthplace of such parks, a total of 120 draw 240 million visitors a year.