Lula met with Alberto Fernández this Monday (23)| Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/Palácio do Planalto

During a meeting with the President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, this Monday (23), President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) defended that the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) should once again finance development and engineering projects in neighboring countries. According to the PT, the idea is for Brazil to be an international “protagonist” in the financing of large projects.

“The BNDES will once again finance Brazil’s trade relations and will once again finance engineering projects to help Brazilian companies abroad and to help neighboring countries to grow and even sell the result of this enrichment to a country like Brazil. Brazil cannot remain distant. Brazil cannot become small”, said Lula.

Still according to Lula, the Brazilian bank is going to “create efforts” to finance the stretch of the gas pipeline to connect Argentine Patagonia and Brazil. “We are going to create the conditions to finance whatever we can to help with the Argentine gas pipeline,” said Lula.

The energy integration agreement aims to take natural gas from the Patagonian basin of Vaca Muerta to Rio Grande do Sul. “I’m sure that Brazilian businessmen are interested in the gas pipeline, in the fertilizers that Argentina has, in Argentina’s scientific and technological knowledge. And, if there is interest from businessmen and the government and we have a development bank for that”, he defended.

Still according to Lula, he was “proud” of when the BNDES had more resources to finance works in a South American country. “Because that’s what the bigger countries have to help the countries that have less conditions in certain historical moments”, he declared.

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