Brazil: Campos Neto defends Central Bank autonomy and minimizes Lula da Silva’s criticism

The president of the Central Bank of Brazil (BC), Roberto Campos Neto, downplayed this Thursday (19) the criticism made by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to the autonomy of the bank.

In an interview with GloboNews, Lula da Silva classified the autarchy’s autonomy as “nonsense”.

In a seminar promoted by an American university, Campos Neto, who has a mandate until the end of 2024, defended the body’s formal autonomy.

He said that in some interviews, information is taken out of context and said the statements should be seen in the broader light of the need for independence to exist under the law.

“If you look at the interview, on the one hand, he is proud that [Henrique] Meirelles [former BC president] had independence. On the other hand, what I think he meant was ‘I don’t think we need to have the independence in the law, you can have independence without the law and make things work,'” he said.

“When you think about what is happening in Brazil and how difficult the election process was in Brazil, I think the market would be much more volatile if the Central Bank did not have the autonomy in law. It would be another element of uncertainty”, he declared.

During the afternoon, the Minister of Institutional Relations, Alexandre Padilha, denied the government’s intention to change the BC’s status.

In a post on social media, he wrote that “the president [Lula da Silva] is not going to change his stance now, even more so with a law that establishes rules in this regard.”

With information from Agência Brasil