The president said international organizations cannot “asphyxiate” developing countries.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) used his speech at the inauguration ceremony of Dilma Rousseff (PT) as president of the New Development Bank (NDB) to criticize traditional financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
This Thursday (04/13), he said that these organizations should not “asphyxiate” the economies of developing countries.
“Banks must be patient. If necessary, renew the agreement and put the word tolerance in each renewal because it is not up to the bank to stifle the countries’ economies, as the International Monetary Fund is doing now with Argentina,” Lula said . in your speech.
Argentina has been going through an economic crisis for years and has had to resort to IMF loans. The country’s relationship with the organization, however, is subject to criticism and divides the local political class.
Dilma’s inauguration as NDB president was Lula’s main event this Thursday.
The NDB was founded in 2014 by the original members of the BRICS, a group of countries that brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Each country has contributed resources and the institution finances infrastructure projects in its members. The bank was officially created in 2014, and now, in addition to the BRICS, it also has Egypt, the UAE and Bangladesh. The bank is also evaluating the entry of Uruguay.
Dilma assumed the presidency of the bank after a political articulation led by the Brazilian government already under the command of Lula.
In his speech, Lula defended the creation of alternative financial institutions to finance projects in developing countries. According to him, the idea is to avoid dependency on organizations like the IMF.
“In the eight years that I have been president of Brazil, we have tried to create the Bank of the South, with the prospect of unifying all of South America around a project that would allow us to finance investments in things necessary in our country without having to abide by the rules dictated by the International Monetary Fund,” Lula said.
“[O FMI] when they lend money to a third world country or any other bank when they lend to another third world country, people feel empowered to be in charge, to manage the country’s account,” the president said.
“Do you remember, especially in Brazil, when every year a man and a woman landed at Rio de Janeiro or Brasilia airport to go and check our country’s accounts. We changed the rule,” Lula said.
Lula also criticized international dependence on the dollar. He advocated for developing countries to start adopting mechanisms to finance projects and exports in their local currencies.
“Who decided the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of gold as a standard? Why wasn’t it the yen? Why wasn’t it real? Why wasn’t it the peso? Why were our currencies weak […] because today a country needs to run after the dollar in order to be able to export, when it could export its own currency and central banks could certainly take care of this”, Lula said.
“It’s difficult because there are people who are not used to it because everyone depends on a single currency. I think the 21st century can mess with our heads and it can help us, who knows, to do things differently,” the president said.
Lula is in China for a state visit to the country. This Thursday, in addition to Rousseff’s inauguration at the NDB, she has scheduled meetings with Chinese executives from companies such as Huawei, in the telecommunications sector, BYD, in the automotive sector, and state-owned companies in the infrastructure sector.
On Friday (15/04) he will be received by President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
Source: Terra
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