Brazil: Mercadante takes over BNDES and confirms the bank will finance leftist countries

Upon taking office this Monday, January 6, the president of the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), Aloizio Mercadante, confirmed that the bank would finance works in leftist countries, a practice adopted by the governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff between 2003 and 2016.

During this period, about 80 construction works in Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries governed by the left in Latin America and Africa received large amounts of financing with excellent conditions, such as long payment terms and low-interest rates.

The two countries and Mozambique defaulted and have not yet paid back their loans.

During a trip to Argentina on January 24, Lula confirmed the return of international financing, suspended under the governments of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro.

At the inauguration, Mercadante said, “President Lula is absolutely right when he says that BNDES has to be a partner bank for development and regional integration.”

“Our development necessarily goes through the integration of Latin America, through the partnership with the countries of the global south,” Mercadante said in his inauguration speech.

According to Mercadante, a historic petist militant and until then president of the Perseu Abramo Foundation, a branch of the PT, “Brazil will be even greater when it acts together with its neighbors.”

“Brazil is more than half the territory, GDP, and population of South America. We are irrevocably inserted in this geographical and historical context. Our destiny is therefore indissolubly linked to the destiny of our region.”

Lula’s government program coordinator, there were doubts whether he could, in fact, assume the position in the public bank, considering that the State Law prohibits, for 36 months, people who had participated in the electoral campaign from assuming positions in the management and on the boards of state-owned companies.

However, the Federal Audit Court (TCU) did not find any violation of the law.

Mercadante was Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation, of Education, of the Civil House in Dilma Rousseff’s (PT) governments.

With information from Revista Oeste

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