President of BNDES confirms plan to create the Brazilian Eximbank
Valor Econômico
The president of the BNDES (National Development Bank), Luciano Coutinho, confirmed yesterday that the bank studies ways to fully operate as a traditional Eximbank, adding to the financing of exports the activities of credit insurance, operations of guarantee and financing, in special cases, of imports. The change, which would concentrate in the BNDES the activities of support to exports currently distributed through other bodies of the Government, like the Treasury Department, still has no date to be implemented, and it will depend upon the approval of the Congress to perform this change in the attributions, by means of a draft law or provisional measure, said Coutinho.
The idea of creation of the Eximbank is another initiative of the Government to facilitate the life of the exporters, who may still suffer for some time with the effects of the international crisis and the reduction of the markets, said Coutinho. No one in the Government believes in the end of the operations of Banco do Brasil in the support to the exports, with the advances of foreign exchange contracts (ACC, in Portuguese) and Acceleration of Delivered Negotiable Instruments (ACE, in Portuguese), credit lines for the production and the purchase of export products. Recently the BNDES has also reduced the cost of its pre-shipping lines (production for exportation) as a means to make it up for the crisis the exporters are facing, recalled Coutinho.
The president of the BNDES foresaw that the dynamism of the domestic market and "autonomous investment decisions" may guarantee growth of "at least" 4% for the Brazilian economy in 2010, recovering from the fall of 2009, when growth should be at 1% or a little below that. "Of course (the country) can grow 6% or 7%, but for such investments are required", he commented. The activities that depend upon the foreign sector will undergo difficulties for some more time, specially those requiring heavy capital investments such as steel work, the car industry and the production of machines and equipment for the industry, he foresaw.