Though Belo Horizonte doesn’t have flourishing tourism like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, it’s still considered as one of the most successful cities in Brazil. The reason why it isn’t garnering many tourists as the other Brazilian cities is that it lacks the one component that draws tourists to these destinations – beaches. But because of the big industries that decided to make Belo Horizonte their home, and because of the service sectors that decided to settle there, the city didn’t fall behind other Brazilian cities. In fact, presently, Belo Horizonte’s service sectors make up 85% of the economy while the multinational industries made up the remaining 15%.

Enterprises that were state-owned and foreign multinationals started what would be the start of Belo Horizonte’s booming economy. This paved the way for local companies to join in on the economic ride.

Foreign Companies

Google has its headquarters set up in Belo Horizonte. This is their office for Latin America that ran Orkut, a popular social networking site. Oi which is the biggest landline phone company in Brazil and the second biggest in Latin America also holds their headquarters in Belo Horizonte.

Industrial District

In the 1940s, the chief industrial sector of the city was started. This was in Contagem which is part of the official metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte. A lot of multinational companies have invested to have subsidiaries in the area. Some of these companies are FIAT, an automobile manufacturer that is the largest in Italy; Toshiba, a Japanese company that manufactures advanced electrical and electronic products; and Arcelor, a steel company which is the biggest producer in the world. There are also other pharmaceutical, textile, cosmetic and furnishing companies that are in Belo Horizonte.

Technological Sector

Biotechnology and Informational Technology are also areas that contribute much to Belo Horizonte’s economy. In fact, more than 16% of Brazil’s biotechnical industries are found in Belo Horizonte. The city is also considered as one of the best in the field of Biotechnology due to do the very advanced university and corporate research in Biodiesel in the city.

Because of these advancements and the positive turn of investors in the city, Belo Horizonte has put in a lot of effort and money to promote the city as the business location of choice. Every year about 3000 national and international events are hosted for this purpose. Business-Tourism is what Belo Horizonte truly focused on.