São Paulo – Brazilian companies operating in Libya prior to the upheaval that ended the Muamar Kadafi regime are interested in returning to business in the country, and there are opportunities for more companies. This information was disclosed by ambassador Afonso Carbonar, who should soon take over Brazil’s diplomatic office in Tripoli.
"They (the Libyans) want Brazil to return,” said the diplomat to ANBA while visiting the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, in São Paulo, where he met with CEO Michel Alaby. Large companies, like Odebrecht, Queiroz Galvão and Andrade Gutierrez, as well as Petrobras, had contracts in the country, but business was suspended during the 2011 conflict.
The return to works was doubted when members of the movement that ousted Kadafi said they would grant preference to companies of other nationalities for the contracts, as Brazil had abstained from voting in the United Nations Security Council regarding authorisation for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) to start operating in North Africa.
Carbonar stated that interest in return of companies was stated by the Libyan deputy prime minister, Omar Abdelkarim, on visiting Brazil in April. “He said that the Libyans would like companies to return and that they may feel safe,” he stated. “We have no reason to doubt it,” he added.
The ambassador pointed out that Abdelkarim understood Brazil’s position. According to him, the country abstained because the resolution authorised the use of “all possible means” to defend the civil population, a very generic expression that would make space for virtually any military action, in the opinion of Brazilian democracy.
Furthermore, according to Carbonar, the Libyans want more companies from Brazil to seek contracts in the country. During the visit of the deputy prime minister, Brazil’s minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Fernando Pimentel, said he would organize a trade delegation to Tripoli.
The diplomat also explained that there is interest of both countries in expansion of trade, strongly affected by the conflict. "And we may, in the near future, find ways to return to investment, with generation of jobs,” he said.
Dialogue
Carbonar pointed out that the two important branches of his work will be political dialogue and the establishment of bilateral cooperation in areas of Libyan interest. Brazil is already collaborating with removal of land mines put in during the conflict, in the identification of armaments in the country and in the donation of medication. The ambassador said that it is estimated that around 300,000 people are armed in Libya and that it is a permanent focus of tension.
However, the diplomat pointed out that the National Transitional Council (NTC), which took over the government after Kadafi’s fall, has been successful in implementing a reform schedule and that the country is living a moment of "reorganisation of political forces”.
Parliamentary elections are scheduled for Saturday (7) and Brazil’s national congress has offered assistance in the process. Carbonar recalled that the country has experience in the area, as it lived the transition from a dictatorship to a democratic regime in the 1980s.
Furthermore, he said that Brazil may collaborate in the formulation of public policies, like income transfer programmes, as is the case with the Family Purse, in the agricultural area, though Embrapa and in industry, with the National Service of Industrial Education (Senai), among other initiatives. "Important transformation is expected in the [Libyan] society,” said the diplomat.
Carbonar started in the diplomatic career in 1980 and has already operated in Washington, Boston, Moscow, Rome and Damascus. Within the Brazilian Foreign Office (Itamaraty), he has already been the Mercosur trade negotiator and has worked for the Investment, Science and Technology and Defence and Security departments.
*Translated by Mark Ament
