backMessage of President
Annual Report 2007; pag. 18
Standing out from other similar institutions is of key importance to a small organization like ours, and it means we have to offer high-quality services through motivated co-workers.
Sometimes it is necessary to get away from our daily activities and analyze the job done, focusing on those areas that need improvement. Having this in mind, the Chamber’s directors held a weekend meeting in August 2007 to reflect on the current situation and plan the necessary changes.
Before the meeting, our members answered a questionnaire giving us some feedback on the level of the services provided by the Chamber, considered very good by most members.
When we analyze the main activities developed during the year, we can see that there was a significant increase in the number of commercial inquiries and of events and fairs organized.
Our membership keeps growing gradually. It is worth mentioning that our membership fees accounted for 35% of our total revenues in 2007 compared to 46% in 2006, clearly showing that the Chamber is perceived more and more as a service provider.
After analyzing our strengths and weaknesses, we defined five major projects to be developed during this year and next year in line with SWISSCAM’s mission, which is:
“Always act with ethics, transparency, and determination to become the channel of choice for facilitating business between Brazil and Switzerland having as basis our personalized services and our relationship with Swiss governmental authorities”.
Our actions during 2007 included supporting an increasing number of Brazilian companies wanting to set up subsidiaries in Switzerland. The country offers a number of advantages, such as multicultural qualified manpower, solid infrastructure, and low taxation. Moreover, its geographic location favors companies wanting to reach the rest of Europe.
Fostering the dialog between entrepreneurs and politicians is one of SWISSCAM’s goals. We can say we have achieved this objective by bringing to Brazil a group of executives representing large Swiss companies to meet with Doris Leuthard, Swiss Minister of the Economy, during her visit to our country. We were glad to see that the numbers and facts presented by these executives to Minister Leuthard greatly helped her understand the current scenario and discuss it with her counterparts from the Brazilian government.
We believe the work initiated by the Mixed Swiss-Brazilian Commission on Economic and Trade Relations will greatly enhance the bilateral relations between our countries.
The economic and social scenarios were positive in 2007. Not only did we have a great improvement in our economic indicators, with low inflation, strong currency, positive trade balance and balance of payments, but we also witnessed a reduction in the country’s poverty levels.
This favorable scenario is mainly the result of a growing global market that demands more and more products and raw materials. The strong Real helped keep inflation rates down and improve our industrial sector.
Unfortunately, this very positive scenario is not stimulating the government to abandon deep-rooted habits, such as promoting constant tax increases instead of reducing the government’s expenditures. Most expenditures aim at supporting the government’s structure and meeting some obscure needs, while there has been very low investment in infrastructure and other important areas. These deep-rooted habits, which pervade the country’s political sphere, might have sour consequences in less favorable times. The society, as a whole, should get together to at least discuss the issue. First of all, it is necessary to understand the problem and have a genuine interest in demanding that we have a government from the people and to the people. It requires time, but there has been some progress in this direction.
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