Brazil in the presidency of the G20 must focus on climate and debt of poor countries, says secretary – 04/15/2023 – Market

Brazil assumes the presidency of the G20 in December of this year and must have on the agenda of economic priorities the mobilization of resources for sustainable development and the fight against climate change, in addition to debt relief for poor countries, according to the secretary of International Affairs at the Ministry da Fazenda, Tatiana Rosito.

“These are themes that tend to gain attention now”, he tells the Sheetwith the caveat that the country’s agenda of priorities in the G20 will still be defined by the Presidency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In the absence of the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, who traveled with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to China, Rosito represented the portfolio along with the president of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, at the spring meetings of the IMF (Fundo Monetary Fund) and the World Bank that took place this week in Washington.

Haddad’s absence frustrated interlocutors, according to reports to the report, who were curious about the new government’s priorities, but the ministry should prepare bilateral meetings between the minister and finance heads of other countries in events that will take place in the coming months, says Rosito.

According to her, the climate agenda was one of the strongest topics in the meetings with the country this year, “and Brazil has an important change of position” in relation to the Jair Bolsonaro government. “There was this return of Brazil with great force to the multilateral scene and with all the willingness to treat and cooperate internationally in the fight against climate change”, she says.

Concerns with the scenario of global uncertainty, in the midst of persistent inflation and monetary tightening with high interest rates, in addition to the geopolitical fragmentation of global trade, divided into political blocs, were other topics most mentioned at the meetings, she says.

Rosito says that there was interest from investors in the country and that, in a meeting with the Brazilian authorities, the IFC, the financial arm of the World Bank, informed that it will invest US$ 5 billion in the Brazilian private sector, the largest volume ever invested in a single country. “It is strong evidence of the dynamism of the Brazilian private sector, with an environmental and sustainability focus, since the IFC has solid ESG methodology and criteria”, he says.

The IMF projections for Brazil, however, are not positive. The Fund foresees an increase in the public debt and primary deficit for the next three years, values ​​different from what the Brazilian government projects in the Bill of Budgetary Guidelines, of zeroing the primary deficit next year. The fund also revised the Brazilian GDP growth estimate down to 0.9%.

For Rosito, “the Brazilian projection does not include all the variables that have recently been placed, such as the fiscal framework”, whose proposal is to reduce the debt. She also points out that the negative revision of GDP and inflation occurred for the whole world, and also for Latin America.

“Each country has its timing. Brazil was one of the first to start the tightening cycle and is also being very quick in seeking to reverse the situation of imbalance and pursue fiscal balance since the first months of government”, he says.

In China, Lula criticized the IMF in a speech on Thursday (13) and defended that international investments do not mean transferring command of economic policy to developing countries. By upholding the right of countries to go into debt to invest, he stated: “It is not up to [ao FMI] to choke the economies like they are doing now with Argentina”.

Questioned about whether the speech harms the country’s meetings at the body in Washington, Rosito says that the speech did not reverberate. “These were always constructive meetings. This topic was never raised.”