GDP: tourism reacts and boosts the economy in 2022 – 02/03/2023 – Market

The 2.9% growth of the Brazilian economy in 2022 was boosted by the provision of services that had been paralyzed in the initial phase of the pandemic.

Activities associated with tourism, including bars, restaurants and hotels, are part of the list that benefited from the end of restrictions on the movement of people.

This is what the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) data for 2022, released this Thursday (2) by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) indicate.

On the supply side, the service sector grew 4.2% last year, pushing the 2.9% advance of GDP. Within services, the greatest expansion came from the branch described by the IBGE as other service activities. The increase in this case was 11.1%.

In other services, the institute highlighted the contribution of activities related to tourism, such as food, accommodation and car rental. The GDP calculation does not bring a specific variation for tourism as a whole.

“It was a continuation of the resumption of demand for services after the Covid-19 pandemic. In other services, we can highlight sectors linked to tourism, such as food, accommodation and car rental”, said Rebeca Palis, coordinator of National Accounts at IBGE .

In 2020, the initial year of the pandemic, the branch of other services had plummeted by 9.3%. In 2021, the initial period of vaccination against the coronavirus, there was a 9.1% increase.

This resumption gained traction in 2022 with the stimulus of demand that was still repressed, according to economist Fabio Bentes, from CNC (National Confederation of Commerce in Goods, Services and Tourism).

“People are consuming tourism services again. This happened especially in the second half of 2022”, he says.

According to the economist, tourist activities also felt the restrictive effect of inflation and high interest rates, but on a smaller scale compared to commerce and industry.

The 2023 scenario, however, should mark a slowdown after the strong warming of the previous year, points out Bentes. “The economy as a whole will slow down this year,” he says.