Haddad meets with Soros, IMF and Meta foundation leaders in Davos

The Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, will participate this Tuesday (17th) in a series of meetings and in a panel on Brazil at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. The program includes meetings with directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Meta, which owns Facebook.

During the morning, Haddad had meetings with the Saudi investment minister, Al-Fahli; with Mark Malloch Brown and Alexander Soros, respectively chairman and chairman of the board of directors of Open Society, the foundation of investor George Soros; and with Ian Bremmer, president of the consultancy Eurasia.

According to Haddad, the Saudis – who already have partnerships with Brazilian companies and banks – are interested in investing mainly in public-private partnerships and concessions in Brazil. “They have investment funds and are attentive to all the public notices for partnerships that the Brazilian government and states and municipalities are going to launch in the next period. This is good, because it is a very important volume of resources available for investment”, said Haddad to journalists .

With the Open Society, the agenda was “of a different nature”, according to Haddad. “An agenda more focused on the environmental question and the democratic question,” he said, without giving further details.

The conversation with Bremmer, from Eurasia, revolved around geopolitical issues: Brazil’s position in the context of the trade war between the US and China, the war in Ukraine and “Brazil’s possibilities in this international dispute for industry and trade,” according to with the minister.

“Market is less tense”

Haddad is now participating in an event with bankers and investors promoted by Itaú Unibanco. Before the meeting, he told journalists that he considers the market “less tense” with the tax issue.

“Tax is a prerequisite for development. It is not an end in itself. You have to keep your accounts in order, but to develop the country you need a proactive policy to map the country’s opportunities, where you will invest in science and technology, how it will rethink its energy matrix, what type of industry it wants to attract to its territory”, he said. “The tax is part of the homework, but it is not the complete economic agenda if you are thinking about economic and sustainable development.”

Asked about the reactions to the depredations at the headquarters of the three Powers on January 8, Haddad said he was surprised by the “degree of concern” of his interlocutors in Davos. “They are very shocked by what happened and somewhat relieved that the response was prompt and consistent,” he said. According to the minister, one of the objectives of his visit and that of the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, to Davos was “to reassure the international community that Brazil is working, it has returned to the democratic game and has returned to thinking big, it has returned to the table of great nations that seek development with social justice and civil and political freedoms”.

At 1 pm in Davos (9 am in Brasilia), Haddad and Marina Silva speak in the special session “Brazil: A new roadmap”, which should last 45 minutes. Next, Haddad will meet with the director general of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, and with the ministers of Economy of Colombia, José Antônio Ocampo, and of Finance of Germany, Christian Lindner.

The last commitments of the day are a meeting with Nick Clegg, president of Global Affairs at Meta, owner of Facebook, and, in the evening, a dinner hosted by the BTG Pactual bank.