MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil plans to send thousands of students to learn abroad on scholarships

President Rousseff: “effort and sweat” made Brazil the world’s seventh economy

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said that Brazil is the seventh economy in the world and announced that the government is to finance scholarships abroad. “We are the world’s seventh economy and this is due to the effort and sweat of those who made this country grow,” she claimed.

“We need a qualified working force in order to keep pace with our new cycle of development, with the qualification and education of our workers we will build a richer and dignified nation free of poverty,” Rousseff said as she promised to build over 200 new schools.

During her standard radio announcement she stated that “there wasn’t a single advanced country in terms of science and technology in the world that hasn’t sent its citizens to study abroad. We have over five thousand Brazilian students on government scholarships”.

“We want to press forward our goals and give over 75 thousand new scholarships until 2014,” said Rousseff who returns to the Planalto after being working at the official residence due to pneumonia.

Brazil has been growing sustainedly since the implementation of the Real plan in the mid nineties but infrastructure and qualified labor has not kept up with the country’s performance.

This seems to be more evident as Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics which is demanding huge investments in transport and communications facilities and qualified personnel.

However even as Brazil can claim to be the world’s seventh economy behind US, China, Japan, Germany, France and UK and ahead of Italy, Canada, India and Russia, it is one of the countries with the most unequal distribution in the world.

Less than ten percent of the population controls well over 60% of GDP and most farmland.