Cameron In Brazil To Boost Trade Links

David Cameron has arrived in Brazil to bang the drum for British business and capitalise on the success of the summer Olympic games.

The Prime Minister is due to meet president Dilma Rousseff at the presidential Planalto Palace in the capital Brasilia on the last leg of his trip.

On the agenda for talks with Ms Rousseff will be Brazil's growing energy sector, which Mr Cameron believes provides an opportunity to export UK expertise and skills gained in 40 years of drilling in the North Sea.

Brazil is South America's largest energy market and has the continent's second biggest oil reserves, after Venezuela.

On Thursday Mr Cameron visited Sao Paulo with a 58-strong business delegation, where he opened a new £60m JCB factory.

Mr Cameron flew on to Brazil after a trip to New York to speak at the United Nations, where he also fitted in an appearance on the David Letterman show.

Talking to reporters at the JCB factory, he laughed off the fact that he had been unable to explain the meaning of Magna Carta or say who composed Rule Britannia during the programme.

Mr Cameron has been joined in Sao Paulo, which is Brazil's commercial capital, by a 40-strong business delegation as well as trade minister Lord Green.

The 350,000sq ft JCB plant in Sorocaba will potentially bring in £100m of business in orders from JCB companies in Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Wales.

JCB recently won a Brazilian government tender for £60m for 1,000 backhoe loaders for road construction and hopes to secure some of the upcoming £20bn infrastructure projects in Brazil.

Mr Cameron said: "This visit is about British jobs, British growth and the British economy, because I want Britain to be tied up to the fastest growing economies on the planet."

The Prime Minister was shown round the factory by JCB chairman Sir Anthony Bamford, who has written a report on manufacturing for the Government.

Sir Anthony said: "JCB is a British company. We are very proud to be a leading exporter of British-made products, but to be a true global company we need to manufacture in the markets which really matter in the world, such as Brazil."

Mr Cameron was welcomed by Sao Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin, who offered him a coveted invitation to the opening match of the 2014 football World Cup in Brazil.

Thanking the governor, Mr Cameron noted that football was "a sport invented in Britain but perhaps perfected in Brazil".

On the two-day visit, which is his first to Brazil as Prime Minister, Mr Cameron will also hold talks with President Dilma Rousseff.

Mr Cameron has made fostering trade links with emerging economic giants a key foreign policy priority.

He believes there are major opportunities for UK contractors to use the experience and expertise gained from the London Games to bid for work in Rio, which is hosting the Olympics in 2016.

Downing Street said 58 businesses and universities are represented on the trade delegation in Brazil. They include BA, BT, Deloitte, HSBC and Jaguar Land Rover.