BNDES president says Brazil faces challenge of fighting inequality

The president of Brazil’s National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES), Gustavo Montezano, said today (Sep. 28) that the country is facing a huge challenge: to fight the social inequality aggravated by the crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“For the elites, for the more developed classes, the crisis is gone. For the disenfranchised, the crisis will be rather long. It is further increasing our social imbalance, so we need to act with a sense of urgency, implementing tax and administrative reforms and continue the agenda of structural overhauls in Brazil, because, for those without a job, the urgency is still here,” the executive said.

In Montezano’s view, the social and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country is “really intense,” but the public and private sectors, he went on to argue, have joined forces to tackle the consequences of the novel coronavirus.

Among the repairing measures listed by the BNDES president are programs for employment preservation, the funds aimed at sustaining small and medium-sized companies, and tax postponements. “All these made the volume of credit for small and medium companies grow in February 2020 until today by over $36 billion,” he pointed out.

Montezano added that the development bank has diversified and expanded the range of products and services to fulfill its mission.

“The bank continues with capital availability and liquidity appropriate to finance infrastructure and development in Brazil,” he stated, while attending the online edition of Painel Telebrasil 2021, promoted by Conexis Brasil Digital, which brings together a number of telecom firms.