08/12/2023 – 5:36 pm
With a new program, Lula wants to stimulate the economy. The protection of the Amazon, the environment and the climate are irrelevant. The government seems to have learned nothing from the mistakes of previous PACs, opines Alexander Busch.At the beginning of the week, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was celebrated as the savior of the Amazon at the summit in Belém. Two days later, with the same noise , presented a program for the economy, the so-called New PAC Development and Sustainability.
But in it, environmental issues play almost no role. Quite the contrary: there are numerous projects in the program that are diametrically opposed to what Lula announced at the beginning of the week.
One of the most prominent items are the investments in oil and gas under the umbrella of state-owned Petrobras. Oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River is also planned, whose authorization Ibama has just refused.
The package also includes the continuation of construction of the Angra 3 nuclear power plant, which began 40 years ago. From Mato Grosso, the Ferrogrão railroad will connect soy-growing areas through the Amazon to ports in the North region. The route passes through indigenous reserves and is quite controversial – and not just among environmentalists.
These are all projects that will have a high price, because they literally “pollute” Brazil’s energy matrix. And, on the other hand, they increase the risk that the forest will be destroyed even more quickly. With the New PAC, Lula’s new role as the main leader in protecting the environment of the global South is weakened.
repetition of errors
But that’s not all: there is a great danger that mistakes made since the beginning of PAC 1, in 2007, in the first Lula government, and PAC 2, executed by the Dilma Rousseff government, from 2011 onwards, will be repeated.
Above all, this means the major corruption scandals that came to light from 2014 onwards: in addition to Petrobras, Brazilian contractors were particularly involved.
It worked like this: Petrobras financed the projects. Construction companies, such as Odebrecht, carried them out – and passed part of their income back to the politicians who approved the projects.
This was a profitable cycle for those involved, which cost the state many billions but did very little for the country in terms of infrastructure. Huge sums of money were spent on completely unrealistic projects.
Some of the projects involved in massive corruption are now about to restart: like the expansion of the Abreu e Lima refinery, in Pernambuco, which already cost billions in previous PT governments. Or Transnordestina, the rail connection from the interior of the Northeast to the region’s ports. Angra 3 also failed to produce a watt of electricity, even after many billions leaked through obscure channels.
“PACs 1 and 2 were not successful”, criticized Claudio Frischtak, president of consultancy Inter.B and with a decade of experience in the World Bank. “Actually, they were very problematic programs.”
Striking evidence of failure are two emblematic projects in Rio de Janeiro: the large shipyards that were supposed to be used to build oil platforms and tankers for Petrobras are all bankrupt. And the cable cars, which were supposed to connect various parts of the city, such as Complexo do Alemão to downtown Rio, no longer work.
Conclusion: as the New PAC is nothing more than a copy of its two predecessors, it will hardly solve Brazil’s major problems in infrastructure, housing and sanitation.
A cycle with many interested participants is more likely to start again.
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For over 30 years, journalist Alexander Busch has been Latin America correspondent for the Handelsblatt publishing group and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper. Born in 1963, he grew up in Venezuela and studied economics and politics in Colonia and Buenos Aires. When he is not traveling around the region, he is based in Salvador. He is the author of several books about Brazil.
The text reflects the opinion of the author, not necessarily that of DW.
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