Brazilian presence in the USA
US president Donald Trump does not want more Latin Americans in the USA. But a programme launched by Correios, the Brazilian post office, called Compra Fora (buying abroad) will benefit both US companies, Miami airport, the scheme’s launch pad, and Brazilian e-commerce customers. A new foreign trade zone established for MIA twelve months ago helps (see page 40 of ITJ 21-22 / 2018).
At the end of January, Correios, the state-owned Brazilian postal service provider, presented its Compra Fora scheme (buying abroad) in the nation’s capital, Brasilia. The presence of Miami-Dade county mayor Carlos A. Gimenez and Miami airport (MIA) director Lester Sola underlined the fact that the southern Floridian city is sometimes also called ‘Latin America’s northernmost metropolis’.
The programme allows articles of any size bought online anywhere in the world to be shipped to Brazil via Miami airport. The consignments will be processed in advance through customs clearance at MIA by Correios, before they are then imported into Brazil as domestic freight. In the past, Brazilian e-commerce customers sometimes had to wait for weeks or even months before receiving their goods; now it may take just a few days.
38% of the freight on one route
Correios selected MIA as the first partner in its Compra Fora programme because the hub is the leader in the USA for cargo flights to Brazil; it handles 38% of all USA–Brazil airfreight. For MIA, Brazil represents the largest international market for passengers and trade, accounting for 1.5 million travellers and USD 12 billion worth of cargo shipments a year.
The logistics service providers Sinerlog USA and Interport Logistics, from Miami, are the first partners in the Compra Fora programme. Items bought in the USA by registered customers in Brazil (picture 1) are first stored in Interport’s facility in the Miami-Dade county foreign trade zone.
After inspection and customs clearance they are shipped to Brazil with a Correios label, where they are fed into Correios’s domestic distribution network and transported to their final destinations through the firm’s logistics network. Compra Fora allows Brazilian customers to have their own postal network address in the USA (2), to schedule and group their shipments (3), pay taxes and fees, and track orders through Sinerlog’s safety tracker system (4).
Past deal enables cooperation today
One of the foundations for the creation of Compra Fora was the signing in 2006 of a sister airport agreement between the Miami-Dade’s aviation department and the Brazilian airport authority.
Miami-Dade’s county commissioner Jose Pepe Diaz said that his authority is “extremely pleased to see this initiative become reality, after years of hard work and collaboration between Miami-Dade county and Correios.” He expects bilateral air trade to continue to boom as a result.
Statista, a German online statistics service provider, expects the value of Latin American e-commerce transactions to grow from around USD 30 billion in 2015 to more than USD 64 billion this year. Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, accounted for an estimated 65% of these purchases in 2018.
