Categories: Business

Mercadante announces new BNDES board: “We are not going to bring BNDES from the past”

Mercadante announces new BNDES board: “We are not going to bring BNDES from the past”

Aluizio Mercadante, appointed by President-elect Lula (PT) to take over the BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development) as of 2023, announced this Wednesday afternoon (21) the names of the bank’s new board, including people from capital market and former members of past PT governments.

They would be:

  • Alexandre Abreu – former director of Banco do Brasil and former president of Banco Original, will occupy the financial position.
  • José Luis Gordon – former president of the Brazilian Research and Innovation Company (Embrapii), takes over as Director of Innovations
  • Natalia Dias – president of Standard Bank Brasil, goes to the Capital Markets department
  • Luciana Costa – Green Economy
  • Tereza Campello – former Minister of Social Development and Fight against Hunger during the Dilma Rousseff government and one of the creators of Bolsa Família, will take over the Social area
  • Nelson Barbosa – Planning Director

“It’s a high-level team, people from the market, from the financial system, with experience in public administration to pave the way for the BNDES to boost Brazilian industry. Brazil needs to reindustrialize. The BNDES industry portfolio was 43%, today it is 16%. Brazil without industry does not generate jobs or innovation,” Mercadante told the press.

“The pulp and paper and wind energy sector developed there [BNDES]🇧🇷 We would not have aeronautics without the BNDES. We are building a new BNDES. We are not going to bring back the BNDES of the past, we are building the BNDES of the future. There is no fiscal space in the budget, we have to look for new sources of financing. It has a lot of resources out there,” he stated.

Mercadante also highlighted that the bank should also focus on micro and small companies. “We are going to have a special look at MSEs, which represent 29% of GDP. In Italy they are 65%, in Germany 70%. We need to double that weight in Brazil. The BNDES does not only have to look at large companies. We have to democratize credit, generate jobs and development.”

Regarding the market’s reaction to his name, Mercadante said that he now has “three translators”, who are bank CEOs, to “help in the dialogue and interpretation between Brasília and Faria Lima”. “We have the same interests for the country, but from different places. We want to generate jobs, green economy, reindustrialize the country and they want results in their funds. We have to find a way to preserve the space for private initiative, structuring the capital market, which is very important.”

Aluizio Mercadante stated that there are 525 public development banks in the world, with US$ 18.7 trillion in the world economy, with 10% of the world’s investments coming from development banks, he said. “We have a public bank that is only 5% investment. So we have room to improve, but not against private initiative, not harming, complementing and strengthening Brazil and its investment capacity.

*with information from Reuters

Source: CNN Brasil