PERFORMANCE OF BANANA AND GRAPE EXPORTS IN THE BRAZILIAN NORTHEAST AND ITS DETERMINANTS IN THE PERIOD FROM 1997 TO 2021
International competitiveness, Fruits, Gravitational model, Northeast, Brazil.
In 2021, the total value exported by Brazil in fruit was US$ 1.06 billion, with the Brazilian Northeast responsible for US$ 780 million of this value, representing a considerable share of exports, placing the region as the main exporter in the country. The first four Brazilian states in the national ranking of fruit exports are: Pernambuco, Bahia, Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte. Among the fruits produced in the region, bananas and grapes stand out. The objective of this work is to analyze the performance and identify the determinants of Northeastern exports of grape and banana fruits. For this purpose, the gravitational model of trade was used as the basis for the estimates using PPML (Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood) and GLS (Generalized Least Square), for a better treatment of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation. The results were consistent with those found in the literature, in which trade flows for both fruits are directly related to attraction variables and inversely to repulsion. The econometric model showed that variables representing the “size” of the country, such as the HDI and the partner's population, are mainly responsible for banana exports, while for grapes, the partner's GDP and the partner's participation in the world market are more decisive. For the “repulsion” variables, the distance stood out for both fruits. In addition, it was found that the destination of exports is important for understanding Northeastern exports through the “locality dummy”, which shows greater difficulty in entering markets with greater quality requirements.