page_title: Bahia
section_title: Economy
hierarchical_section_title: Bahia / Economy
caption_attribution_description: Cacao, Brazil, Ilheus
context_page_description: Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the 4th-largest Brazilian state by population and the 5th-largest by area. Bahia's capital is the city of Salvador, located on a spit of land separating the Bay of All Saints from the Atlantic. Once a monarchial stronghold dominated by agricultural, slaving, and ranching interests, Bahia is now a local manufacturing center whose last four elections have been dominated by the Workers' Party. The state is home to 7% of the Brazilian population but produces only 4.2% of the country's GDP.
context_section_description: In 2004, Bahia comprised 4.9% of the economic activity of Brazil and it has the biggest GDP of the states of the North and Northeast. The industrial sector is the largest component of GDP at 48.5%, followed by the service sector at 40.8%. Agriculture represents 10.7% of GDP (2004). Bahia exports: chemicals 22.4%, fuel 17.5%, mineral metallics 13%, paper 9.4%, cacao 5.6%, vehicles 4.8%, soybean 4.5% (2002). In addition to important agricultural and industrial sectors, the state also has considerable mineral and petroleum deposits. In recent years, soy cultivation has increased substantially in the state. Bahia is the sixth largest economy in the country.
  During the colonial and imperial periods, Bahia was a center of Brazilian sugarcane production and slave trading. In the 19th century, the Bay of All Saints was also a whaling spot, as some species of whales used the bay as a mating ground. By that time, the province was also growing cotton, coffee, and tobacco with great success. mandioc, rice, beans, and corn, saffron, oranges, mangoes, and other fruit were grown for local consumption. The arid interior was mostly used for cattle-farming, but this was ruined by a series of droughts caused in part by the custom of starting annual wildfires to improve the grass. Diamonds, gold, and amethysts were panned for in the rivers, while coal was mined on Itaparica. cacao was being farmed by the time of the First World War. As late as the mid-1950s, the Bahian economy could be considered a typical example of the primary-exporting model, which followed the subsistence production. For ten years, this dynamic was led by the cocoa crop, that used to be the state's main product and its most important source of income. With the acceleration of the industrialisation process in the 1970s, which started in the 1950s, the productive structure began to change. This process, which was not limited to the regional market, was inserted in the Brazilian industry matrix through the chemical (specially petrochemical) and metallurgical segment. Consequently, for the last twenty years, it grew more than the national average, due to the fact that the state was previously below the average level. The industrial sector is the main contributor to this growth, when the investments that was being made was in the chemical, petrochemical and automotive segment, and in agroindustry and food production.
  In agriculture, the state stands out in the production of cotton, cocoa, soy and tropical fruits such as coconut, papaya, mango, banana and guarana, in addition to also producing sugar cane, orange, beans and cassava, among others.
  In 2017, the Northeast Region was the largest producer of coconut in the country, with 74.0% of national production. Bahia produced 351 million fruits, being the leader in the country. However, the sector has been suffering strong competition and losing market to Indonesia, the Philippines and India, the world's largest producers, who even export coconut water to Brazil. In addition to climatic problems, the low productivity of coconut palms in the Northeast Region is the result of factors related to the variety of coconut harvested and the technological level used in coastal regions. In these areas, the semi-extractive cultivation system still prevails, with low fertility and without the adoption of cultural management practices. The three states that have the largest production, Bahia, Sergipe and Ceará, present a yield three times lower than that of Pernambuco, which is in 5th place in the national production. This is because most of the coconut trees in these three states are located in coastal areas and cultivated in semi-extractivist systems.
  In the production of cocoa, for a long time, Bahia led the Brazilian production. Today, it is disputing the leadership of national production with the state of Pará. In 2017 Pará obtained the leadership for the first time. In 2019, people from Pará harvested 135 thousand tons of cocoa, and Bahians harvested 130 thousand tons. Bahia's cocoa area is practically three times larger than that of
caption: Cocoa in Ilhéus
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