Rio's Christ statue has rival

A little-known Brazilian farming town with sugar cane wealth is set to upstage Rio de Janeiro by erecting a statue of Christ that will eclipse its famous equivalent atop Rio's Corcovado mountain.

The Christ statue in Sertaozinho, northwest of Sao Paulo city, will be 187 feet tall when perched on its 128 foot pedestal, Brazilian daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo said on Tuesday.

Rio's iconic statue overlooking the beach-side city measures up at 98.4 feet high, but its much shorter pedestal gives it a total height of just 125 feet.

"Far from a pretense of grandeur, we're thinking about visibility," said Nerio Costa, mayor of the town 330 kilometres from Sao Paulo which hopes to inaugurate the structure at Easter.

But those suspicious that Sertaozinho, with a population of just over 1 lakh, is trying to rival the country's top tourist city can cite other evidence.