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Amidst a flurry of good economic news coming out of Brazil in recent days, GE Healthcare added its own boost — inaugurating its first factory in South America in Contagem, Brazil. News of the plant, which will serve both the local market of Brazil and eventually become an export hub for all of Latin America, comes as a new United Nations report on the region expects the economy of Latin America and the Caribbean to expand “by 5.2 percent in 2010, up exponentially from a previous view of 4.1 percent,” Reuters reports, adding that “the body sees the economy of Brazil, the region’s biggest, soaring 7.6 percent in 2010 and 4.5 percent in 2011.” In the video clip below, Mark Vachon, President and CEO of GE Healthcare Americas, provides an overivew of what the new GE plant will be producing and why Brazil was chosen.

At an event this evening, Brazil’s Central Bank President Henrique Meirelles and GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt will share the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce’s Person of the Year Award, which each year honors one Brazilian and one American leader for helping to forge closer ties between the two nations. For the occasion, we asked Joao Geraldo Ferreira, GE CEO of Brazil, to write a guest post on GE’s latest work in the country.

At yesterday’s opening session of the World Economic Forum’s Latin America summit, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez was joined by Ferdinando “Nani” Beccalli-Falco, President & CEO of GE International — who offered ideas on development as the region builds on its current economic successes. “These few things — they are ‘motherhood and apple pie’ as my American friends say — they are simple things,” Nani told the audience. “But prosperity and success always come out of the simple things we can think of.”

Latin America is in the spotlight today as the World Economic Forum’s regional summit kicks off — and so, too, is GE’s presence in Brazil, which is marking its 90-year anniversary. With the country accounting for 40 percent of GE’s South American revenue — $7.5 billion in 2009 — we briefly talked to GE Brazil President and CEO Joao Geraldo Ferreira about the 90-year milestone and what the country means to GE and the region. “Brazil definitely has the momentum right now,” Ferreira said. “Brazil was the last one to get into the economic crisis, and the first one to get out of the crisis. The economy was supposed to grow by ½ percent GDP in 2009. This year they’re projecting 5.2 percent, and maybe more GDP growth.”

A drive for cleaner energy is revving up in Brazil. In the Amazon, an ambitious project aimed at replacing power plants running on heavy fuel-oil with new, cleaner-burning natural gas engines from GE’s ecomagination line of more energy efficient technologies is underway. While near the eastern coast, two new power projects will mark the debut of GE’s wind turbines in the country.