Lula defends social investments and the role of public banks in financing development

The president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defended this Monday the use of banks public for offering credit and the financing of the country’s development, and said that investments and social advances cannot be considered expenses.

“We will have to talk a lot and invest a lot to create jobs. And to generate jobs, we need to have investment. We need credit. And in order to have credit, we will have to use public banks to finance the development of this country”, he declared. Lula at an event for the resumption of the Mais Médicos program, at the Planalto Palace.

“Well, if the government doesn’t have money in the Budget, if businessmen don’t have money to invest, you have to use public banks to help save this country”, concluded the president.

The statements were made in the midst of discussions in the federal government on the new fiscal framework, presented to the president by the Minister of Finance, Fernando HaddadLast Friday.

Earlier this Monday, the vice president and minister of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services, Geraldo Alckmin, said that the new fiscal anchor should be publicly presented in the coming days and will be based on the debt curve, the surplus and the control of expenses.

When commenting on perceptions about what he considers investment in the country’s development, Lula pondered that many of the delays faced by Brazil are due to a mistaken notion of what public spending would be.

“Brazil is experts in this. We, every time we are going to discuss a social advance, someone from the economic area appears to say ‘but this is an expense, we cannot spend it, there is no way to spend it’”, he said.

“Everything about us is always late. And everything in us is always late because of spending. So we need to clear our heads. Economics courses from then on need to change what is cost and what is spent — and what is investment”.