International trade standards and competitiveness of the chemical wood pulp and conifer sawn wood sectors do Brazil and Chile front of major world exporters☆
Introduction
The forestry sector has played a significant role in contributing to economic and social development in Latin America. Considering the magnitude of world demand, however, the participation of the forest-based sector in the market is below its potential.
The planted forest sector in Latin America is relatively new, starting in the 1950s – 1960s, with two main countries in this process being Brazil and Chile.
In Brazil, it was implemented with a strong Brazilian state policy, mainly with Pinus elliotti in Southern Brazil for cellulose, later replaced by Pinus taeda, and by the genus Eucaliptus spp., mainly in the Southeast to produce cellulose and charcoal for the steel production sector.
In Brazil, the eucalyptus planting had an extremely high growth going to all regions of the country, being the main focus of growth currently in the Midwest region.
Chile, in turn, implemented the pinus radiata for sawn wood and for cellulose at about the same time.
Thus, for Brazil, coniferous sawn wood became a “by-product” of the main use for conifer plantations, which was for CWP, while for Chile it was already one of the main objectives.
The sector can produce more and transfer wealth to other segments of the economy. To be competitive, conducting this process in a consistent and sustainable manner, it is necessary to open new markets, increase participation and, at the same time, modernize and guarantee high social and environmental standards for forestry activities.
Thus, these two countries are highly competitive in the international markets in which they participate, having, however, high successes in one or another of the sectors studied here.
Brazil is currently the main exporter of cellulose, accounted for in 2019 with a market share of 21.2%, and the tenth largest exporter of conifer sawn wood from conifers with 1.89%, while Chile responded that same year with 8.13% (4th largest exporter) and 3.06% (8th largest exporter respectively) (OEC, 2021).
Therefore, one of the main functions of competitiveness studies is to allow a comparison between the best world production standards, aiming to identify competitive advantages and disadvantages, contributing to the improvement of political measures and production practices (Almeida et al., 2013).
Generally, the term competitiveness refers to international trade: exportable or potentially exportable and capable of successfully competing with imports or exporting without incurring losses. Although some studies seek to classify entire countries by competitiveness, the concept has greater clarity and precision when applied to certain sectors, or groups of producers in the same sector, who face similar conditions in input and output markets (Norton, 2016).
Therefore, the research aims to analyze the competitiveness of the two main countries in Latin America - Brazil and Chile - in both coniferous sawn wood and chemical wood pulp markets.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
An analysis of competitive advantage includes demand, market share, availability of resources, market price, product quality and other factors. But, these indices do not consider the presence of existing distortions in the economy, such as tariff restrictions, subsidies, trade agreements and exchange rate misalignments, which can affect the results obtained by the index. However, they serve to outline the trade patterns of a given Economy (Dorneles et al., 2013).
The approach of the technique
CSW competitiveness analysis
Regression models using the RSCA index as the dependent variable were not consistent.
When identifying the RSCAs for the export of CSW between 2000 and 2019, it was observed that the values found allowed us to note that all analyzed countries presented, on average, comparative advantages.
Of these, however, Brazil stands out, one of the two focus countries of this study, which, despite being, on average, showing a positive level of competitiveness (Figure 1and Table 3), this is lower than the
Conclusion
The results achieved by the authors suggest that while Chile is more dynamic in the international market for coniferous conifer sawn wood, Brazil is more dynamic in exporting CWP. At the same time, Chile has a higher level of competitiveness (RSCA) in both products. This is closely related to the economic structure of each country and sector.
Unlike what was expected, the exchange rate was not significant to explain the export dynamics of the analyzed products, neither to Brazil nor to Chile.
A
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for the invitation of Professor Zenobio Abel Gouvea Perelli da Gama e Silva and Professor William F. Hyde to be part of this Special Edition and for the valuable and constructive suggestions and recommendations of Runsheng Yin, associate editor and reviewer, and William F. Hyde, guest editor. The authors are also grateful to the Graduate Program in Forestry Engineering at the Federal University of Paraná, especially the professors of this department for their teaching.
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