The idea of a one-stop shop for foreign investors is nothing new. But the Brazilian style of achieving it is different. For one thing, Brazil’s one-stop shop will not be under one roof.

New investment promotion agency Investe Brasil aims to to build up a network of senior executives in all the ministries, government bodies and agencies that have a bearing on foreign investment. That way, if a foreign investor has a concern that is correctly the province of national development bank BNDES, for example, or central bank Investe Brasil contacts its “man on the spot”. He is charged with personally sorting out the difficulty or getting the answer from the inside.

“We will be much more responsive to investors than Brazil has been in the past,” said Rudolf Hohn, president and director of Investe Brasil. “I think the country has been a bit weak in terms of responsiveness and follow-up. If an investor comes here but leaves with some worries, no one follows up. The aim is to change that.”

Investe Brasil is a joint public and private initiative; half its funding and board members come from government and the other half from private sector bodies such as chambers of commerce and confederations of industry and agriculture.

It has been inspired by Brazil’s pressing need for foreign investment to close its balance of payments deficit and the realisation that more than 100 countries around the world had investment promotion agencies but Brazil did not.

In 2000, the country attracted $32bn of FDI – more than enough to bridge the current account deficit but, in 2001, the figure was likely to finish around $20bn, less than the current account deficit.

The fall-off in FDI flows to emerging markets, the poor global economic outlook and the arrival of a more mature stage in the privatisation programme all contributed to this.

Despite this, the prospects for the Brazilian economy are the best they have been for many decades and optimism is high following the country’s avoidance of contagion from the Argentine crisis.

“This is the first time since the Second World War that we have had, at the same time, single-digit inflation, an adequate exchange rate and a concentration on putting an end to fiscal problems,” said Fernao Bracher, chief executive of Brazilian corporate bank BBA and a former central bank governor. “It gives us an opportunity we have never had.”

The challenge now is to spread the word to investors. Investe Brasil aims to pull together people throughout the world, working in embassies and for government departments, who can help with the marketing.

On the location side, Investe Brasil has to convince administrations in the 27 Brazilian states, many of which do their own promotion work, that co-ordinating with the new agency will be beneficial.

Brazil is a huge country, and a large cast of characters needs to be involved in the network to make it work but then Mr Hohn is used to challenges.

Before retiring four years ago, he was president of IBM in Brazil and saw that company through a successful expansion even during a period when buying foreign IT was largely off limits to Brazilian companies. If anyone understands the problems of the foreign investor, it is he.