Text VII questions 38 through 40World Bank Brazil country brief1 With an estimated 167 million inhabitants, Brazil has thelargest population in Latin America and ranks sixth in the world. Themajority live in the south-central area, which includes industrial cities4 such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte. 80% of thepopulation now lives in urban areas. Rapid growth in the urbanpopulation has aided economic development but also created serious7 problems for major cities.Brazils miracle years were in the late 1960s and early 1970swhen double digit-annual growth rates were recorded and the structure10 of the economy underwent rapid change.In the 1980s, however, Brazils economic performance waspoor in comparison with its potential. Annual Gross Domestic Product13 (GDP) growth only averaged 1.5 percent over the period from 1980to 1993. This reflected the economys inability to respond tointernational eventsin the late 1970s and the 1980s: the second oil16 shock; increase in international real interest rates; the Latin Americanexternal debt crisis and the ensuing cutoff of foreign credit and foreigndirect investment. This lack of responsiveness reflected the largely19 inward-looking policy orientation that had been in place since the1960s.Economic flexibility was further impaired by provisions of the22 1988 Constitution, which introduced significant rigidities in budgetingand public expenditure. An outcome of these pressures was a steadyrise in the rate of inflation, which reached monthly rates of 50% by the25 middle of 1994.Internet: (with adaptations).The sentence "Rapid growth in the urban population has aided economic development but also created serious problems for major cities" (R.5-7) means the same as
