Montevideo, May 21st 2013 - 19:22 UTC

Search this edition

Search query Go

Monday, March 21st 2011 - 21:52 UTC

US Export-Import bank loans Brazil 3 billion USD for oil and World Cup

13 comments Feed

Note: Comments do not reflect MercoPress’ opinions. They are the personal view of our users. We wish to keep this as open and unregulated as possible. However, rude or foul language, discriminative comments (based on ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality, sexual orientation or the sort), spamming or any other offensive or inappropriate behaviour will not be tolerated. Please report any inadequate posts to the editor. Comments must be in English. Thank you.

1 Fido Dido (#) Mar 21st, 2011 - 10:04 pm Report abuse

Wow, this guy invest more outside than in his own country that's falling apart.

2 Redhoyt (#) Mar 21st, 2011 - 11:50 pm Report abuse

If Brazil is doing so well, why does it need to borrow ?

3 Forgetit87 (#) Mar 22nd, 2011 - 12:00 am Report abuse

All countries take loans, and they do so because they can't just take money out of the pocket whenever they needed it: they have limited budgets, so certain kinds of investment need to be paid for with money other than government revenues. The links below are about loans to India and China, two countries whose economies are undoubtedly better off than the UK's or the US's.

blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia/world-bank-provides-four-loans-worth-over-43-billion-india

news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/25/content_8436378.htm

That said, I don't understand why Brazil would need to loan from a US public bank, since it owns over 195 billion dollars in US Treasury bonds.

4 Fido Dido (#) Mar 22nd, 2011 - 12:52 am Report abuse

That said, I don't understand why Brazil would need to loan from a US public bank, since it owns over 195 billion dollars in US Treasury bonds.

It used to be higher ( 300 billion or higher).Net creditor nations, like Brazil, China, Russia, India, and some OPEC nations are dumping slowly the treasury bonds. Japan should do the same so it can rebuild it's nation rather print more money, what will hurt them more in the long run.

5 GeoffWard (#) Mar 22nd, 2011 - 04:21 pm Report abuse

Yeah, Forgetit & Fido,
I've got this far also - but it doesn't stack up.

And, though I keep an eye open for these sort of things, the $10billion request that Petrobras/Lula made to the USA passed me by - perhaps it was supressed information in Brasil.

Perhaps throwing US resource at pre-salt will bridge an energy gap for the USA.
Perhaps there is an circumscribed undeclared oil-export agreement tied into the loan.
Perhaps this is the only way that Brasil can meet its World Cup and Olympic commitments.

There is much more here than we have so far been told.

6 Fido Dido (#) Mar 22nd, 2011 - 06:40 pm Report abuse

And, though I keep an eye open for these sort of things, the $10billion request that Petrobras/Lula made to the USA passed me by - perhaps it was supressed information in Brasil.

No, you were not paying attention, you were rather to busy watching American Idols and listining to rhetoric between the left and the right, what's stuck in your head.

7 Forgetit87 (#) Mar 22nd, 2011 - 06:45 pm Report abuse

Information was not supressed, GeoffWard, this is not Cuba... or the US. And Mercopress is wrong, Petrobrás borrowed 2 billion dollars, not 10 bllion, in 2009. Perhaps Brazil would rather borrow than take its own money from the US Treasury because, by doing the latter, the real's value vis-à-vis the dollar would go up, something that we know the govt wants to prevent. Perhaps that's also the reason Japan isn't using its own US Treasury bonds to finance reconstruction works in the Sedai province. Japan is already worried enough about its strong currency and would like to weaken it.

8 GeoffWard (#) Mar 22nd, 2011 - 10:31 pm Report abuse

Forgetit - you're Brasilian! Living home or away?

I find $10billion of Federal Reserve (via EX-Im) on the table and $10billion of Chinese money:

tripplecheck.wordpress.com/2010/07/31/debunking-snopes-the-soros-petrobras-obama-gulf-moratorium-conspiracy/.

People (including Soros) really want to get into bed with Petrobras! - including Lula and the Brasilian Government, who bought huge share allocations using tax-payers money last year, in all practical senses nationalising Petrobras - not a bad thing in itself, but the 'smoke and mirrors' money-movements in & out and to & from government certainly destroyed the big-money-trail during the election.

Much more interesting than some American idols (whoever they are), Fido.

9 Forgetit87 (#) Mar 23rd, 2011 - 12:56 am Report abuse

Home. You thought I was Argentine?

The link says that Ex-Im B. offered to raise the loan amount. It seems my information was actually outdated. Statement retracted, then. And Geoff, Petrobrás has always been a state-owned company. During the Fernando Henrique years, Petrobrás opened its capital to private investment. But it has always been under government control. Its board of directors, including the president, are all pointed by the government. It seems FHC and the PSDB planned to privatize Petrobrás. They only didn't do it because they knew it would anger the population (and the military). Perhaps this might be difficult for you to comprehend, but people dislike privatization. So, Lula's move to increase the government's share in Petrobrás's capital didn't provoke a popular lashback, even if taxpayer money was used for that purpose. After all this means that government shares in Petrobrás's profits will also go up.

10 GeoffWard (#) Mar 23rd, 2011 - 12:41 pm Report abuse

Thanks, forgetit.
I've always been intrigued about :
(i) where the dislike and fear of private ownership came from,
(ii) how it fixed itself in the psyche of the Brasilian people, and
(iii) why - with Brasil's opening up and exposure to world trade practices - this fear has not abated.

Are Brasilians more fearful of corruption in private companies than corruption in their Government and the government administrative and industrial enterprises? . . . . .
Because institutionalised corruption has by far the largest reach and 'all-pervadingness' into society.

The populace has a MUCH more difficult time erradication state corruption (State profit-skimming, Mensalào, Ficha Limpa, sentence with appeals, etc, etc.), than shareholders have getting rid of private enterprise corrupt managers.
Even so, thank God we don't live in Venezuela!

11 Drew Puli Wolf (#) Mar 23rd, 2011 - 10:02 pm Report abuse

There seems to be a lot of misinformation about this, most of it put out by the FOX news (no surprise there). Forbes Magazine ran an article about it to clear up the truth from fiction. First fact is, is Pertobras has yet to use one cent of the loan. Second - this is a loan, if Petrobras decides to use the money it has to pay it back. Thirdly and most import is any money used from a loan from the Ex-Im Bank must be used to buy American. The bank as existed for over 70 years. This is from the banks mission statement – “The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) is the official export credit agency of the United States. Ex-Im Bank's mission is to assist in financing the export of U.S. goods and services to international markets.” All the money the bank loans is spent in the US. 85% of the money goes to small businesses .

12 Forgetit87 (#) Mar 24th, 2011 - 07:57 pm Report abuse

Privatization means the state won't partake in companies' profits: that's why most people dislike it. This is particularly true of companies such as Petrobrás and Vale - natural resources companies - because their profits are derived from what is considered as state property (there's still controversy about Vale's privatization in the 90s, in part because of the rampant corruption that permeated the whole privatization process during that decade). Opposition to privatization gets stiffer when a natural resource company is sold to a foreign group because this sort of dynamic - the extraction of commodities to benefit foreign interests - resembles the economic model of European colonization. Vargas founded Petrobrás because of that, because people disliked the fact that, prior to its creation, US multinationals monopolized oil production in Brazil. And for similar reasons the Brazilian military regime imposed state monopoly over oil and mineral production, and restricted foreign parchases of national land.

The issue isn't one of morality - corruption or the like - but of convenience. People just can't understand why a govt would altruistically let go of a profitable company for the sake of private interests.

13 GeoffWard (#) Mar 25th, 2011 - 02:50 pm Report abuse

I like your rationale about the very land being owned by the Brasilian state and that selling it to individuals is like selling off the family silver.

I have argued that proposition wrt sales of Brasilian agricultural land to Chinese public/private partnerships.

The UK evolved a very different model where ´a man´s home is his castle´:
he buys it, he owns it, he can make as much as he is able within the laws of the land from it, and he gets the profits (which are taxed by the state along this process, and through all that block of land´s sequence of private sales).
We saw, through the 1950-60-70s in the UK, nationalisation resulting in overstaffing, declining productivity, declining profits, uncompetitiveness, and the unwillingness to look beyond the shores for worldwide trading opportunities and profit.
In fact, PROFIT became a dirty word in the minds of the British unions of these nationalised companies - their rationale was the circulation of cash within the organisation and the maximising of union jobs the workforce. UK unions forced ´restrictive practices´ that increased uncompetitiveness, and work gravitated overseas.
This socialist model still exists in pockets - particularly in Scotland, though the British Communist Party and Old Labour has declined to dust.

But *Brasil* now exists in a globalised world where enterprise in manufacture can and should be competing with the speed and alacrity of the privatised model.
Brasilians need ENCOURAGEMENT that they can ´do it themselves´.
This can only come from the top - through statements of true altruism, for the better good of ALL Brasilian society.

Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!

ANALOGA information.design Estrategia y diseño Web.