MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Dilma says Latin America needs to take path of reindustrialization

Rousseff described the investment fund BlackRock's prediction that there will be a nationalization of value chains amid sanctions against Moscow.

The Puebla Group has launched an appeal for the reindustrialization of Latin America to counter the region's dependence on global inputs and imports.

As a result of the war in Eastern Europe following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the problem of Brazil's need for Russian fertilizers became paramount.

“We cannot be content with Uber, Ifood, and Airbnb” because “whoever is satisfied with being an importer of technology will be subjected in a more perverse way than what is happening today,” former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said during a Puebla Group meeting in Rio de Janeiro.

“We will see, on that road, young people without jobs or study. We cannot overcome inequality in Latin America if we do not reindustrialize,” she added.

The former head of state insisted that all of Latin America must become “more autonomous and sovereign in its geopolitics.” She also stressed that everything related to fuels, and oil will be central in this war context, something about which she is knowledgeable after having been Minister of Mines and Energy.

Rousseff described the investment fund BlackRock's prediction that there will be a nationalization of value chains amid sanctions against Moscow.

“Many people are going to start thinking about what currency they are going to invest in if the strength of the dollar in transfers is going to diminish,” Rousseff explained.

“India agreed to pay in rupees, depositing in rubles, breaking Swift. Saudi Arabia agreed to sell its oil to China using the yuan. We must remember that the Persian Gulf was the region that first accepted the change from the gold standard to the dollar standard,” the former president went on.

“Latin America must be very attentive to this”, because “we have oil, food, and minerals in all of Latin America; this can be strengthened, centralized, but it cannot be condemned to a third neoliberal wave and be a producer of raw materials, we must reindustrialize” because it is “the only way to reduce inequalities,” Rousseff underlined.