Brasília – This Thursday (10th), the Brazilian minister of Finance, Guido Mantega, stated that despite the timid global growth perspectives resulting from the international crisis, Brazil will not have a “lost decade,” a term used yesterday by the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (FMI), Christine Lagarde, while speaking on the risks facing the world economy.
“Of course it is possible that advanced countries will have a lost decade, but I guarantee to you that Brazil will not, because we possess the conditions to react to this crisis, to neuter its effects on Brazil,” he said during an address at Palácio do Planalto (the presidential palace), in the capital Brasília.
Mantega stated that the worsening of the international crisis requires that Brazilian economy be strengthened “as a whole” and that in order for the country to be successful in this “enterprise,” the government and Congress, and society must work ceaselessly, by passing acts and measures. “We must continually take action to strengthen the Brazilian economy and most of all to maintain a solid fiscal situation,” he said.
The minister also said we are “facing a difficult to solve crisis” that mainly affects advanced economies, and that a growing number of countries is becoming a part of it. Mantega, however, claimed that these nations will manage to address the situation.
“I believe that they (the countries) will eventually solve it, soften its effects, but we must also be prepared to face low global growth for many years to come,” he said.
* With information from the ANBA newsroom. Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum