Brazil

Brazil: Large Economy, Modest Military Footprint, Rising Debt

Brazil's economy was worth $2.19 trillion in 2024, per the World Bank's WDI series, with GDP per capita of $10,311 and a population of 212.0 million. The IMF's World Economic Outlook projects government debt at 96.5 percent of GDP in 2026 — a figure well above the levels typically associated with fiscal headroom, though the dataset does not provide a prior-year trend to show the trajectory.

On reserves, the IMF's International Financial Statistics put Brazil's holdings at $334.3 billion as of 2025, a substantial buffer relative to the debt figure above, though the two series come from different sources and years and should not be read as a single balance sheet.

Military Posture

SIPRI's 2025 figures put Brazilian military expenditure at $23.9 billion, or 1.054 percent of GDP. That share is calculated against SIPRI's own GDP series, not the World Bank figure cited above, and the two should not be mixed. Active personnel stood at 367,000 as of 2022, per the Correlates of War National Material Capabilities (COW NMC) dataset, which also assigns Brazil a Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score of 0.0201 for the same year — a composite measure of relative power, not a monetary figure.

Governance

V-Dem's 2025 data (v15) scores Brazil at 0.784 on electoral democracy and 0.704 on liberal democracy, both on V-Dem's 0-to-1 scale, alongside a state capacity score of 0.862. These place Brazil in the upper range of V-Dem's global distribution for democratic institutions and administrative reach, though the dataset supplies no comparison countries or historical series to contextualize movement.

Energy

Brazil's primary energy consumption was 14.11 exajoules in 2024, according to Our World in Data's energy series. Electricity generation reached 750.53 terawatt-hours in 2025. Oil production was 2,117.55 terawatt-hours and gas production 228.39 terawatt-hours, both for 2024. The scale of oil output relative to gas points to a production mix weighted toward crude, though the dataset does not break down consumption versus export volumes.

Data Gaps

No figure for Brazil's current GDP growth rate, inflation, or trade balance appears in the supplied data. The debt figure is a 2026 projection rather than an observed outturn, and the reserves and military-expenditure figures are both drawn from 2025 estimates rather than audited year-end accounts. Analysts should treat the CINC and state-capacity scores as index values, not as direct indicators of near-term military or administrative performance.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, IMF IFS, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy)