PARTICIPATION OF THE MAIN BRAZILIAN FRUITS IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE FROM 1997 TO 2008

The current trends in the global food market point to a high growth in consumption of natural products, such as fruits and vegetables. The world market for fresh fruits registered in 2005 cipher exceeding $ 31,5 billion and grows $ 1 billion annum, on averaged. This fact is reproduced in Brazil, which shows increase in fruits consumption. In monetary terms the gross value of fruit production reached, in 2006, around R$ 16.3 billion, 16.5% the value of Brazilian agricultural production. The present study sought analyzing economic features of the Brazilian participation in global trade of fruits from 1997 to 2008. Furthermore, it was analyzed the evolution of the trade balance of the main Brazilian fruit, discrimination of exports in fresh or processed fruits, representation of external trade in value of national production and participation of the exports selected fruits in all exportation of the agribusiness. It was used data from the Household Budget Survey from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the system of Survey and Analysis of Foreign Trade - AliceWeb from the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade and database from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply. After surveying the fruits that would be studied, it was found that growth of the exports was higher than the growth of Brazilian imports in the period of 1997 to 2008. This contributed to increase the balance trade by 112% in the period. Exports of fresh fruits grew relatively more than the exports of processed fruits. However there was a drop in the share of fruits export in the Brazilian agribusiness exports, 5.8%, in 1997, to 3.9% in 2008.