Salvador the City of Contrasts Now Keen on Attracting Foreign Investors

Oct 29
07:01

2012

Paul Dexter

Paul Dexter

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The Brazilian coastal city of Salvador is the third-largest in the country and the largest city on the north-east coast, the area is the wealthiest in the region and keen on attracting foreign investment in both property and land.

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The coastal city of Salvador is the third-largest in Brazil. With 3.5 million in its metropolitan area,Salvador the City of Contrasts Now Keen on Attracting Foreign Investors Articles the urban zone has fewer people than Rio de Janiero but more than the national capital of Brasilia. Overall, this 450 year old city is one of the oldest in the country and has the distinction of being Brazil's first colonial capital. In fact, to this day parts of it still have an old Portuguese colonial-type feel. This co-exists surprisingly well with the rest of the city and the modern bustle of this large up and coming conurbation.

Salvador is the largest city on the north-east coast and it is also the capital of Bahia State. Not surprisingly, the area is the wealthiest in the region and keen on attracting foreign investment. The great cultural diversity (including a strong element of African) in the city has earned it the reputation in Brazil and further afield for fascinating and complex ranges of food, art, music, architecture and general culture. It was declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1985. These days Salvador is a major export location, situated as it is on an excellent natural harbour. It also acts as the main focus and centre of the Recôncavo Baiano, a prosperous industrial and agricultural area taking in the northern part of the coastal region of Bahia.

Something quite unusual about the city (or at least its older, historical part) is that it is divided into two distinct parts. These are on different levels, separated by an escarpment 80 metres from highest to lowest. Most of the admin buildings, together of course with the city Cathedral are on the upper part. Historically, the lower area was the harbour, the market-place and the commercial quarter.There is a special large 'elevator' linking the two areas which has been in use for over 150 years though of course frequently modernized during that time. Salvador's importance as a tourist centre is steadily growing.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tobacco and cocoa were among the enormously important items around here and so was sugar production. Although there have been significant changes, in the early part of the twenty-first century, Salvador still has great economic importance. Financial and commercial services of all kinds have become significant and the port itself remains major. It exports large amounts of petrochemical products, sisal, cocoa and soybeans. The city also caters for local industries such as fishing, cigar production and the large petroleum plant at Camaçari. There is also a huge industrial park (still growing), the 'Centro Industrial de Aratu' which hosts well over one hundred industrial firms.

Consequently to all this, the potential for inward investment in the city stays buoyant. Both long term investment and short term investment still remain attractive. In particular and more recently, construction in this sense has come more to the fore, especially bearing in mind government and private sector efforts to redress the great shortage of affordable homes for Brazil's people by investing more government more in the Minha Casa Minha Vida social housing programme. The general climate of the area is usually categorized as typical of tropical rainforest regions. This means great humidity with no real dry season at all.