Lula wants the fourth naval hub – 02/11/2023 – Elio Gaspari

The other day Lula announced: “We are going to go back to building ships in the Rio de Janeiro shipyards”.

Good idea. Brazil has a coastline, trade, spends a fortune on maritime freight and needs oil exploration platforms. As Asmodeu hides in the details, before putting a single penny into the resurrection of a naval hub, wherever it may be, an exercise in humility would be appropriate, explaining why Lula’s generation financed three naval hubs, with three failures, one worse than the other.

The first naval hub was born during the government of Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-1961). It got stuck, and the biggest losers were the shipyards that received incentives and public funding.

The second pole was born during the Brazilian miracle, during the dictatorship. It also got stuck, with a peculiarity: the disaster materialized in an issue of debt securities by the Superintendence of Merchant Marine, Sunamam. In 1979 it had a larger budget than many ministries and functioned like a real bank. And how the bank failed, with a hole that could have amounted to $1 billion in today’s money. At the time, this herbalist was called “rotten coin”. If it were bank money, it would be worth zero, as it was for the Widow, it yielded around 70% of its face value, serving to buy assets from the same Good Lady. So bankers and businessmen bought up state-owned companies.

The third naval hub emerged during Lula’s government. It generated close to 100,000 jobs. Brazilian welders working in Japan are imported. One of its gems was Eike Batista’s OSX shipyard. It broke with a skewer of R$ 4.2 billion. The petista consulate’s oil companies drowned shipyards and tens of thousands of jobs were lost. The oil tanker João Cândido, built in Pernambuco, was launched into the sea in 2010 and capsized. It only returned to sea two years later. Companies benefiting from orders in this third naval hub became more known for what they told the Justice than for what they produced.

In Lula’s rhetoric, there has never been a generation in human history that financed four naval hubs. Japan, Korea and Singapore funded theirs at one time. When problems occurred, the maganos went to jail and the workers continued to work, producing ships at competitive costs.

If Lula wants to finance the fourth naval hub, it would cost him little to gather half a dozen technicians to show him how the three previous ones got stuck. Part of the answer lies in thefts.

Since the conversation revolves around the Rio de Janeiro shipyards, it’s worth turning the wheel of history. Although many good people believed that Portugal prohibited the installation of any type of industry in Brazil, it is good to remember that on Ilha do Governador, in January 1663, the galleon Padre Eterno, one of the largest ships of its time, was launched into the sea. She could carry four thousand boxes of sugar.

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