The number of Brazilian tourists who travelled to New York increased 41% to 359,000 last year from 2007, making visitors from Brazil the eighth-largest group arriving in the city. Demand is so strong for travel to New York that American Airlines is adding 11 flights a week between the U.S. and Brazil beginning November 18th, the Texas-based air carrier said in a statement on June 24th.
In the country of more than 193 million people, Brazil now has more billionaires than any nation in Latin America according to Forbes magazine, whilst the number of millionaires jumped 19% to 126,882 from 2008 to 2009, according to Boston Consulting Group data. Gross disposable income in Brazil advanced 54.3% from the time President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office in January 2003, the national statistics agency said in an e-mail statement July 16th.
The Brazilian Real has also rallied 100% against the dollar since 2003 and jumped 33% in 2009 alone; the best-performing currency in the world; helped by revenue from exports of commodities such as coffee and soybeans and demand for the nation’s stocks and bonds.
First quarter economic growth of 9%, the fastest since 1995, was driven by consumer spending, as retail sales climbed 15.7% in March from a year earlier, the most since at least 2001. Gross domestic product will expand 7.2% in 2010, the quickest pace in more than two decades, according to a central bank survey of about 100 economists published July 19.
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