Brazil: Parliament Front for Agriculture and Livestock question BNDES on suspension of credit lines to the sector 

The Parliamentary Front for Agriculture and Livestock (FPA) met on Tuesday, 14, to discuss two issues dear to its members: the suspension of 11 lines of credit from the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), announced last week, and the federal government’s provisional measure that restructured the Ministry of Agriculture, creating new portfolios such as Agrarian Development and the reactivation of the Ministry of Fisheries.

Some lines had been suspended in 2022 and resumed on February 1, but what caught the group’s attention was that the suspension of the financing requests occurred two days after the bank had announced an amount of R$2.9 billion related to the Plano Safra (Crop Plan).

Last week, representatives of the group sent a request to the BNDES asking for information on how much of this amount has already been used.

The president of the FPA, congressman Pedro Lupion (PP-PR), said that the bank answered by letter that the R$2.9 billion are remaining resources and were contracted very quickly, in two days, and that, for this reason, the institution had to suspend the financing requests, which mainly benefit family farmers.

In response to the FPA, the bank also promised to resume the credit lines, but without informing deadlines or where the resources will come from.

“This is what has been said for what has not been said. The rhetorical war of politics. We hope that the rural producer is not harmed by this and, especially, that BNDES resumes these lines of financing, as well as all the planning of the Crop Plan,” commented Lupion.

The former Minister of Agriculture, Senator Tereza Cristina (PP-MS), and other senators, such as Hamilton Mourão (PRB-RS), will suggest the maintenance of some departments in the Ministry of Agriculture without migrating to new portfolios.

“We think there is no need to leave the Ministry of Agriculture, such as Conab [National Supply Company], which we have an agency in the oven, ready to leave so that we have strategic intelligence of agribusiness linked to agriculture. Because it is the Ministry of Agriculture that needs these numbers to give credibility to our harvests, with estimates from coffee to corn, wheat, soy, cattle, and animal protein”.

The suggestion that Conab is removed from the Agrarian Development portfolio and returned to the Agriculture portfolio should be sent to the government by the FPA in the next few days.

With information from reporter Berenice Leite/Jovem Pan