MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Temer names a woman to head Brazil's giant development bank, BNDES
Maria Silvia Bastos Marques, a career bureaucrat and onetime steel executive who worked on Rio de Janeiro’s Olympics preparations, will head BNDES 
She will replace CEO Luciano Coutinho, whose name has emerged in alleged dubious bank loans Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer will replace the head of the government’s giant development bank with a female economist, following heavy criticism over his appointment of an all-male white cabinet.
Maria Silvia Bastos Marques, a career bureaucrat and onetime steel executive who most recently worked on Rio de Janeiro’s Olympics preparations, will replace departing Chief Executive Luciano Coutinho at the bank, known as BNDES, a government spokesman said Monday.
The appointment comes as Mr. Temer moves to fill dozens of government posts.
Following the ouster of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, the task of doling out high-level jobs to political allies took a controversial turn last week when Temer named 23 men—and no women—to his cabinet. In a country where more than half the population is racially mixed, the appointments drew further condemnation for going almost entirely to officials of European descent.
“At a time when the new government is trying to build bridges and establish proximity with the public, that image of a government formed only by men distances Temer’s administration from the noble values shared by most of Brazilian society,” said Daniel Vargas, a law professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio.
For the BNDES, Ms. Marques’ appointment likely heralds a downsized role after 13 years of Workers’ Party rule during which the bank became one of the government’s preferred tools for pursuing its economic goals.
The BNDES’s annual disbursements increased nearly six times over between 2003 and their peak in 2013 as the bank financed massive—and sometimes ill-fated—projects and acquisitions by Brazil’s largest firms. In an economy racked by high interest rates in the private sector, the BNDES’s subsidized lending fueled everything from hydroelectric dams in the Amazon to sprawling oil refineries in Brazil’s impoverished northeast.
Even after a 28% drop last year, the BNDES’s total disbursements of 135.94 billion Brazilian reais (about $38.84 billion) were roughly double those of the World Bank.
The development bank hasn’t been spared criticism for its part in Brazil’s twin political and economic crises.
A continuing corruption investigation has uncovered evidence of rampant graft in many of the projects that the BNDES financed in recent years. Some of the investments, particularly in Brazil’s troubled energy sector, went sour. Rousseff’s foes questioned the purpose of loans the bank made outside Brazil, particularly to the Workers’ Party’s ideological allies in Cuba and Venezuela.
And even Ms. Rousseff’s impeachment trial focuses on accusations that she used money from the BNDES and other state-controlled banks to mask the government’s widening fiscal deficit.
Top Comments
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Read all commentsOMG (from an atheist) he's appointed a WOMAN!
May 17th, 2016 - 11:03 am 0The end of the world is neigh!
Uruguay has already shown what a complete bunch of arseholes the children in the government are regarding women.
I cannot find out if the eminently qualified and vastly experienced Uruguayo women who was cited as the general manager of the greatly delayed and vastly over budget regasification project has now been 'approved' by the twats ruining our economy and other matters.
The fact that she was the person who successfully oversaw the design and actually engineered the build of Shell Mexico's gasification plant apparently counts for nothing: she a WOMEN and only men are allowed these jobs. Stands to sense doesn't it?
GRRRR!!!
Good luck to her, she will need it.
I'm here to comment on the same thing.
May 17th, 2016 - 04:57 pm 0I think it's time the writer asks HIMSELF (because it is obviously a man) if it is really necessary to specify a WOMAN was appointed to this position. A man being appointed wouldn't be news, so why should a woman being appointed be? Slow news day?
Let me re-work your headline “Qualified Person Is Appointed To Head Brazil's Giant Development Bank”.
Let's work on eliminating our innate sexism, shall we? It has no place in a reputable publication of any kind.
(2) Dear WomanOnTheInternet...
May 17th, 2016 - 05:23 pm 0Firstly..., this is not a reputable publication of no kind...
Secondly..., the reason why this irreputable publication is making such a great fuss about the appointment of a woman for a responsibility post in Brazil is that..., after the political forces they served succeeded in deposing “La Presidenta” Dilma Rouseff' and immediately after named a whole new cabinet composed exclusively of old rich white male corrupt politicians...., this and many other irreputable publications are in dear need of........... well..... something!
Let me re-work your phrase...: “Probably the only Qualified Person Appointed so far by the new, unelected and completely corrupt Brazilian administration...
Regards from Patagonia
El Think...
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