After 1992, the Brazilian market may offer fresh opportunities to European and US manufacturers and suppliers, according to Tribuna Informatica. There are plans to liberalise the laws governing conditions of foreign access, although imports will still be subject to fairly stringent regulations. A series of laws passed since 1973 have restricted the import of micro and minicomputers in an attempt to protect national products, although domestic production is said to meet under 50% of requirements. Foreign companies wishing to enter the Brazilian market will have to do so in association with local operations, and equity ownership will also be limited. Nonetheless, technology transfer will be possible, and multinational comp-anies are expected to exploit this aggressively. Unisys and IBM were established before 1973, and are pushing hard both to preserve total ownership and autonomy, and the Brazilian government recently sanctioned a $10m investment by IBM to assemble 3090s there.
