Heavy protests from the Brazil civilians revolved hosting the Fifa World Cup in the last couple months.
The civilians of the seventh largest economy by nominal GDP in the world protested the heavy investment in hosting the multi-national event as they thought it would just add up to their existing poverty.
However, a recent survey conducted by FIPE (Economic Research Institute Foundation) for Brazil’s Ministry of Tourism showed the World Cup is set to boost the Brazil economy by generating nearly one million jobs in the country and is expected to inject approximately R$30 billion or near US$15 billion in the economy.
A report in the Rio Times said during the first week of the World Cup, hotel occupancy rates in the 12 cities hosting the games were 45% above that expected by analysts.
Data shows that 340,000 rooms were occupied during that period - 100,000 more than estimated by FOHB (Hotel Operators Federation of Brazil).
The Ministry of Tourism estimates that 600,000 foreign tourists and 3.1 million Brazilians are participating in FIFA World Cup Events (games and Fan Fest), spending a total of R$4.05 billion, around US $ 2 billion, in Brazil during the month-long event. Filled with visitors, the host cities reported a happy business for the restaurants and retailers.
Vicente Neto, the president of Embratur (Brazilian Tourism Institute) said the survey results are very significant. In a press conference he said, “It is an extraordinary human legacy, in the tourism sector alone, more than 50,000 jobs were generated for the World Cup, The numbers are surpassing all the expectations.”
Carlos Caicedo, Senior Principal Analyst at IHS for Latin America, however, said the economic gain is not as relevant as it seems. “We estimate that the World Cup will provide a
boost for the economy of about 0.2 percent of the GDP, but this is rather small in the context of Brazil’s US$2.5 trillion total GDP.”
The Brazilian government reports that in all R$17.6 billion or around US$8.5 billion were spent in infrastructure for the World Cup, for urban mobility, airports, security and in the telecommunication system.
Caicedo said that major sporting events are not likely to have immediate major impact on the economy, rather the benefits are more mid to
long-term, particularly infrastructure “Both the World Cup and the Olympic games (in Rio de Janeiro in 2016) will have acted as major incentives to address the country’s infrastructure bottlenecks.
“It is expected that within the next five years Brazil will have a larger and more efficient public infrastructure (airports, sea ports and highways), which will help to make the
Brazilian economy more competitive by reducing transportation costs,” Caicedo added.