OK, so it hasn’t all been good news in Brazil’s publishing sector lately, but how about this? 

PublishNewsBrazil announces that, following a decade of radically increasing national spending on education, sales of foreign-language books, particularly those in English, are soaring.

Of course this isn’t really news, not if you’ve been watching the growth of the Brazilian book market in just about every direction of late.

As the PublishNewsBrazil piece notes, last month Ingram launched a POD partnership in the country, and OUP has big hopes for the country’s market.

What’s heartening, though, is to see the direct link to spending on education. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that Brazil increased public spending on education from 10.5% of total public expenditure in 2000 to 14.5% in 2005, and to 16.8% in 2009. That’s one of the biggest leaps for that time period, and they’re clearly reaping the benefits now.

Let’s hope the current payoff encourages further investment later.