Senate approves US$195 million for investments in agricultural defense

Minister Tereza Cristina (Agriculture, Livestock and Supply) announced this Wednesday (30), during the meeting of the National Council of State Secretaries of Agriculture (Conseagri), the approval by the Senate of a US$ 195 million loan from the Bank Inter-American Development Agency (IDB) for investments in the Brazilian agricultural defense system.

“Yesterday I had good news, painful, sweaty, but we were finally able to approve funding in the Senate of US$ 195 million to help Brazilian health defense”, he informed the state secretaries gathered at Mapa's headquarters, in Brasília. “It’s not non-refundable, but it’s cheap interest, and this is extremely important for organizing the health system as a whole”, added the minister. “We are now going to fight at the Ministry of Economy for this money to come (soon) here.”

Tereza Cristina asked Agriculture secretaries to alert governors about the importance of the health issue. “We need to work on the same rule. We cannot have two sane Brazils”, warned the minister. “It is in our hands to bring income and new investments. We have to think big,” she stated, referring to the possibility of all Brazilian states exporting their agricultural products, especially to China, today our main trading partner.

Grow more  

“We are setting up a China nucleus here at the Ministry that will work half day and half night to serve them, so that we have something to deliver”, he informed. Tereza Cristina reported that during their meeting last week in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping asked President Jair Bolsonaro to help resolve their problem (supply of animal protein, caused by the decimation of part of the herd affected by African swine fever).

“He (the Chinese president) asked Brazil to enable more plants to export meat to China; we managed to enable 25 refrigerators; they want more”, he highlighted. “We can grow much more, in other chains, in addition to meat, soy, corn, cotton - and not just for China”, added Tereza Cristina. The minister also informed that the Chinese want to import coffee from Brazil. “Help us bring more coffee to China. That’s what I heard,” she reported.

“It is in our hands to be proactive”, warned the minister. “There is no point in thinking that the Chinese need our animal and vegetable protein if we are not sane. There is no point in having good production and good hygiene if we do not answer the questionnaires (sanitary, required for export). We will leave room for others who know how to fill roles better than us; help me with this”, she appealed to the Agriculture secretaries.

The Senate's authorization for the Brazilian government to contract an external credit operation, with a total value of up to US$ 195 million, with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was published in today's Official Gazette of the Union. The resources from the credit operation are intended to partially finance the Agricultural Defense Modernization and Strengthening Program - ProDefesa.