Portuguese is the official language of Portugal and Brazil. With approximately 180 million native speakers, it is also the second most widely spoken Romance language, after Spanish.

The Portuguese government is focusing on boosting exports and implementing labour market reforms to try to raise GDP growth and increase Portugal’s competitiveness. According to the Encyclopedia of the Nations, incentives to attract foreign direct investment will receive more attention, and Portugal may attract some new additional investment from its close links with Spain and Latin America. Due to the limited size of the domestic capital markets, more medium-sized businesses will increasingly seek funding in the international markets.

The newspaper The Brazil Business has identified six business trends in Brazil in 2011:

1. Credit is easily available, also unsecured credit to the lower classes.
2. Politicians are turning left, and the conditions for businesses are suffering. The new president, Dilma Roussef, increased the taxes on foreign investor’s fixed-income purchases.
3. Brazilians are turning to their mobile phones and mobile broadband in huge numbers.
4. In April 2011, Facebook surpassed Orkut as the leading social network in Brazil. Over the last few years, Facebook has been quickly catching up on Orkut as the market leader in Brazil.
5. A couple of years ago, Brazil got the first Apple certified reseller in A2You, and the sale of Apple products started to increase.
6. Analysts and businessmen alike started to talk about the Brazilian bubble, a situation which may happen because of the international attention and the money being injected into the economy.

At the end of 2011, South Korean GDP was $1,245bn, and it was growing at 3.7%. South Korea is a fast emerging economic power and a developed country with a high standard of living.

Booming sectors:

• World leader in technologically advanced goods, such as electronics and automobiles, with large companies like Samsung, LG and Hyundai.
• Leads the world in the shipbuilding industry, with 7 Korean shipbuilding companies ranking in the world’s top 10.
• Global leader in the fields of education, having the world’s highest scientific literacy and second highest mathematical literacy

and it is a trend setting country in Asia, exerting strong cultural influence over the continent in a phenomenon known as the Korean wave.

The Korean government promoted the import of raw materials and technology at the expense of consumer goods and encouraged savings and investment over consumption. According to Euromonitor, a strategy research company for consumer markets, sales of direct selling in Korea increased by 3% in 2009, and a positive growth rate continued in 2010 as value sales increased by 2%.

Direct selling enjoyed very strong growth rates in the early 2000s, but they declined or fluctuated after 2002. The representative surviving products are beauty and personal care, like those of AmorePacific Corp, healthcare and books (including educational materials).

If you want to enter the Korean market, make sure you ask for reliable translation services. Ask SanTranslate.