© Reuters. Lula’s minister says that the single currency is not being discussed with Latin America now
Lisbon, Feb 4 (.).- The Brazilian Minister of Planning and Budget, Simone Tebet, said today that right now the creation of a single currency with Latin America or Argentina is not being discussed, but she stressed that the country needs trade relations with Mercosur and the European Union to grow.
“At this first moment, a single currency for Brazil with Latin America or Argentina is not being discussed,” he said during a video intervention within the framework of the Luso-Brazilian business forum LIDE in Lisbon.
The minister considered that “there was a lot of noise” in the explanations on the subject, but defended that “it is nothing more and nothing less than what Brazil has always been doing in commercial and financial transactions.”
He also stressed that in order to grow again and be competitive, Brazil cannot be alone: ”We need Portugal, Europe and Latin America,” he said, after four years of “regression” in which trading partners were “ignored”. .
“I am speaking especially not only of Mercosur, but also of Mercosur’s relationship with the European Union. Putting the house in order from the fiscal point of view, with an emergency, to do the social thing,” he said.
Tebet was a center-right candidate in the first round of the presidential elections and later supported Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who after winning chose her as Minister of Planning.
Despite the “divergences” that exist between the two in economic policies, Tebet assured that there is “total synergy” in the social area.
“Ending misery, reducing poverty, removing Brazil from the hunger map” are the priorities established by Lula da Silva, he recalled, but growth must also be “guaranteed” because without it, neither employment nor income is generated.
“It also goes through fiscal rigidity and I will be austere in relation to that,” he promised.
Brazil has to “spend the few resources it has well”: “We do not have the conditions to meet all the demands, but managing also means choosing priorities and that is what we will do under the determination of the Government program.”
STRICTLY PUNISHING “SCAMMERS”
Tebet also spoke about the invasion of the headquarters of the three powers on January 8 and the role that the Federal Supreme Court has played afterwards.
“The Supreme Federal Court, in the figure of Alexandre de Moraes, with rigor in the law, with due legal process and based on the Constitution, has been rigorous in the processing of the process and the punishment of what in Brazil are called coup plotters,” he defended.
The LIDE forum, organized this Friday and Saturday at the Four Seasons hotel in Lisbon, was attended by former President Michel Temer, as well as members of the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil and the Superior Electoral Court, among other entities.
