President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva held today (10), in Brasília, an expanded meeting with 13 government ministers to discuss infrastructure projects for the country. According to the president, it is the government’s role to leverage investments to drive job creation and economic growth in the country.
“We can’t keep crying about the lack of money, we have to use the money we have well. That’s why the [Fernando] Haddad is finance minister, because he is creative, if we don’t have money we go after him and he goes to have what to fix. He and Simone [Tebet, ministra do Planejamento e Orçamento] they will get the money we need to invest in the country”, said Lula as he opened the meeting, at the Planalto Palace.
“We are going to say that GDP [Produto Interno Bruto] it will grow because we are going to make it grow, because we are going to generate jobs with small things, we are going to make investments”, emphasized the president.
public banks
According to Lula, other meetings on the subject should also include public banks, such as Banco do Brasil and the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES). For him, it is the role of these institutions to give credit to small and medium entrepreneurs, cooperatives, big businessmen and to state and municipal governments that have debt capacity.
“Why not lend money to these people? It cannot be prohibited to lend money to build an asset that will increase the wealth of this country, which will improve the quality of life of the people”, he argued.
“You can’t keep thinking that the best thing is to save money. Good money is money transformed into works, improving the quality of life of the people, health, education and, above all, employment, which is what gives dignity to the Brazilian people”, added the President of the Republic.
Lula recalled the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), instituted in his first government with a focus on carrying out works, and suggested the creation of a new program to the Minister of the Social Communication Secretariat, Paulo Pimenta.
“I’m sure you’ll surprise me at this meeting with what you already have in terms of proposals for us to do, I saw ‘axes of the new PAC’ here. I would even like to suggest to fellow Pimenta that it is important to put the creativity of communication to work in order to create a new name, the PAC was very important, it produced a lot, but if we can create a new program [isso] it shows that we are renewing and innovating, that we have the creativity to do other things”, he explained.
Dialogue with states and municipalities
For the president, the success of the PAC was due to the dialogue with governors and mayors in identifying infrastructure policies that were easy to implement.
“The PAC was an extraordinary thing. I think it was the richest investment moment in the country because it involved the federal, state and municipal governments. We learned that it was important to transfer money to the city hall that has the project”, he said.
At the end of this month, Lula will travel to China and his expectation is that, upon his return, the inauguration of works will already begin. According to the president, upon taking office, the new government found 14,000 works stopped across the country, many of which were just short of completion.
In a post on Twitter, he announced the Mãos à Obra program, with the aim of identifying, in dialogue with city halls, priority works in each city and region. The launch of the platform takes place this afternoon fridayMonday, in Brasilia.
