“Brazil will fail if it uses commodities in short-term measures” – IDB President

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) president Mauricio Claver-Carone warned about Brazil’s record of leveraging the rise in international commodity prices – the current one and those having occurred at other times in recent history – with short-term, populist policies.

“If we start using this increase in commodity prices with short-term and populist measures, the region is again doomed to failure,” he said.

Carone also points out the infrastructure deficit, particularly in the health area, which became clear amid the health and social crisis triggered by the pandemic, which according to him is due to the lack of investments for structural improvements.

“Latin American and Caribbean countries are the region that invested the least in infrastructure in the past decade. There is a gap in this sector of over US$100 billion,” he says. According to him, investments in infrastructure have a doubling effect on a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP): for every US$1 invested, US$2 are returned.

“However, as we have seen, the increase in prices in the past has been invested in short-term, populist programs, and investments in the future of countries have been ignored, which brings us to the scenario we see now: a third of Covid-19 deaths in the world have occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean,” he says.

“Covax facility failed”

The Covax Facility – a global alliance between the World Health Organization (WHO) and other entities to expand distribution and ensure equal access to Covid-19 vaccines – has not been effectively executed, according to Carone.

Carone also says that the consortium was created to cover 20% of populations, but has failed to achieve this goal. “We need to address what happens with the other 80%.”

The world is experiencing a supply issue, according to him. In this scenario, developed countries have a vaccine surplus of 3 or 4 times the size of their populations. “Wealthy countries must release their vaccine surplus,” he says.

In Claver-Carone’s opinion, vaccination is “one of the great challenges of our time.” Moreover, he also stressed the scope of the crisis created by the pandemic. “It is one of the most difficult times, not only of economic crisis, but the most serious in the bank and the region’s history in the past 200 years.”

Last Thursday, June 3, the U.S. government announced the details of its plan to share at least 80 million vaccine doses with the rest of the world by the end of June. At least 75% of these vaccines will be shared with the Covax consortium, and Brazil will be among the countries benefited.

The total amount of vaccine doses intended for the country, however, is still unclear – the U.S. has not separately stated how many units will be provided per country. A White House statement says that Brazil is in the group to receive 6 million units through the Covax.

In addition to Brazil, doses will be shared among Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, and other Caribbean countries, as well as the Dominican Republic.

Source: CNN Brasil