A importância do setor sucroalcooleiro e suas relações com a estrutura produtiva da economia[The importance of the sugar cane and alcohol sector and its relationships with the economic structure of Brazil]

In an economic context in which the state is reducing its role in the economy, the agents involved with the Sugar Cane and Alcohol sector, usually highly dependent on government policies, have to change their behavior so they can operate in a competitive market without the benefits from the state. Therefore, an analysis of the economic relationships between this sector and the economic structure of Brazil would help to define how this sector could change to the new economic conditions. As such, the goals of this paper are to identify: i) the importance, in terms of backward and forward linkages, of the Sugar Cane and Alcohol sector in the economy, using the concepts of the Hirschman/Rasmussen Indexes (HR) and Pure Linkage Indexes; ii) how changes in the use coefficients of Sugar Cane and Alcohol products, by the sectors that use then as inputs, would spread through out the economy, using the Field of Influence approach; iii) the majors relationships in the economy. The data used in this paper refers to the Brazilian input-output tables construct for the years of 1985, 1992 and 1995 at the level of 34 sectors. The major findings for the HR indexes show that the importance of the Sugar Cane and Alcohol sector, in terms of productive links, practically had no change in the 1985/1995 period. The results for the Normalized Pure Linkages, that show the relative importance of the sector in terms of production generation, show that the sector has improved its position in the 1985 to 1992 period, decreasing in the following one, i.e., 1992 to 1995.