President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lamented, this Thursday (2), the 2022 result of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the sum of all goods and services produced in the country. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reported that GDP fell by 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2022. 2.9% growthagainst 5% in 2021.
“The Brazilian economy did not grow at all last year. So, the challenge we have is to make the economy grow again, and we have to make investments”, he said, at an event to recreate the Bolsa Familiaat the Planalto Palace.
Lula said that the social program is an important public policy to help vulnerable families and that the solution for the country’s social transformation is economic growth. “This is the first dish of soup, beans, the first glass of milk, the first bread, the first piece of meat. Together with this, a policy of economic growth, job creation and income transfer through salarywhich is what matters to the worker.”
The president also argued that, if the investments do not come from the private sector, they should be promoted by the government. “We are only going to generate jobs if the economy grows and, in order to grow, private investment is needed. If there is no private investment, let there be public investment. We don’t want the State to do the things that the private sector has to do, but if the federal government doesn’t invest money to promote development, nothing will happen,” said Lula, defending investments by public banks and companies.
In this sense, the president criticized the amount paid in dividends to Petrobras shareholders, in 2022, to the detriment of the investments that the company could make in the country’s industry. Last year, investments made by Petrobras totaled US$ 9.8 billion.
“We cannot accept the idea of today’s news. Petrobras delivered more than R$ 215 billion in dividends, when it should have invested half of it in the economic growth of that country, in the Brazilian industry, in the shipbuilding and oil and gas industries. Instead of investing, it decided to reward minority shareholders”, added the president. According to him, the payment of dividends exceeded the company’s profit, which reached a record R$ 188.3 billion in 2022.
For Lula, Petrobras is no longer a development company, but an exporter of crude oil. “That’s not why we discovered the pre-salt layer. The pre-salt layer was for us to have a passport for the future of the people and for us to export petroleum derivatives and not crude oil as we are exporting”, he said. “Brazilian companies and Brazilian banks have to think about this country and then think about their profit or their shareholders. It will be like this from now on so that we can change the history of the country”, added the president.
