The Economy Minister, Paulo Guedes, said (March 18) in a conference at the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington, USA, that Brazil is looking for economic partnerships and that it will open its market for foreign investments . The speech was held at the "Brazil Day" event, organized by the business council Brazil and the United States, and Guedes took the opportunity to invite the businessmen of the country to invest in Brazilian projects.

"You can go there to help finance our highways, go after oil and gas concessions, and in three, four months, we will sell the pre-salt, everyone will be there: Chinese, Americans, Norwegians," he said. The minister is part of the party of President Jair Bolsonaro, who is on an official visit to the United States and tomorrow will have a bilateral meeting with the American leader Donald Trump.

Citing the strong Chinese presence in the national economy, currently the largest buyer of Brazilian products, Guedes said the country lacks infrastructure and expects to expand business with its traditional partners. "With very serious infrastructure problems, the Chinenes wanting to get in, we have minerals, arable land, so of course they want to come in and we are looking at our partners," he added.

Guedes took stock of economic policy in recent decades and pointed to the growth of public spending as a problematic legacy of the country. "The uncontrolled expansion of public spending over 40 years has produced a series of crises in the exchange rate, high inflation and, more recently, what we can call a snowball of indebtedness," he said.

According to him, Brazil "builds a Europe every year", paying debt of over US $ 100 billion annually, referring to the Marshall Plan, which was an investment project of the United States for the reconstruction of the allied countries of Europe in the years after World War II.

Pension Reform

Guedes stressed that in less than 60 days of management, the government sent the country's pension reform project and emphasized the need for change. "We are already breaking before the aging of the population, we have to do wisely in the sense of who earns more pay more, recognizing that Welfare has a principle of not leaving anyone behind but can not be a factory of privileges," he argued.

The Minister of Economy also defended the privatization of state-owned enterprises and public assets, as a way to reduce the accumulated debt of R $ 4.3 trillion. "Not only are state-owned enterprises not functioning efficiently, but hampering the growth of private investment. Public investments collapse, because of their own weight in the budget," he pointed out.

For Guedes, Bolsonaro's election showed that Brazilian democracy is "stable" and "vibrant" and praised the president's profile. "Our democracy has never been under threat, the president has 30 years of experience in the National Congress and refuses to play the game that has contaminated our policy. Instead of retail policy, buying political support, using state an alliance between conservatives and liberals. It is an alliance with principles and values, not about money, "he said.