Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 78, has turned his left little finger, which he lost in a work accident when he was a metalworker, into a hallmark.
For many Brazilians it is a daily reminder that his president, before ruling from a palace, was a worker and union leader.
Lula is convinced that the industry should be as central to Brazil's economy as it has been in his life and professional career.
The Government that he heads presented this Monday a plan to boost the industry for the next decade that includes 60,000 million in soft loans, subsidies and grants to reactivate the economy.
“Now we are the ninth economy in the world, but not because it grew a lot, but because others fell.
It is nothing to be proud of,” he warned during the presentation at the Planalto Palace, in Brasilia.
Lula has proposed that the State once again be a central protagonist of economic policy after six years in which a center-right government (with Michel Temer 2016-2018) and another extreme right government (2019-2022) opted for liberal policies. and for thinning public power.
In addition to facilitating soft loans through the BNDS (the National Development Bank), the reindustrialization project contemplates subsidies, subsidies or prioritizing nationally produced goods in government purchases in addition to promoting sustainable financial instruments and innovation credits.
“It is very important to once again have an innovative and digitalized industrial policy,” proclaimed the president, who insisted that there will be collaboration between public power and private initiative.
The president trusts in this plan to stimulate industry and investment in public works, which he presented in July, so that “Brazil takes a leap in quality” and “enters the category of developed country once and for all.”
“Because we always stay there, at the doors,” the president lamented.
He has also recalled that in recent years his country once ranked as the sixth largest economy on the planet, but also fell to twelfth place.
The Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, the strong man of the economic wing, did not attend the presentation; he had an event in São Paulo.
Haddad is the main architect of the tax reform that includes the creation of the VAT among other measures to simplify the convoluted tax system.
And he is the main defender of the zero deficit policy adopted by the Government for this year although it does not arouse the enthusiasm of President Lula.
The reindustrialization plan is the great project of the vice president of the Government, Geraldo Alckmin, a former center-right rival who accepted Lula's invitation to join forces to remove Jair Bolsonaro from power and restore damaged democracy.
The industrialization plan is viewed with notable suspicion, as indicated by the fact that the real has fallen 1.2% after the presentation.
And the Stock Market closed with a decrease of 0.8%.
The editorial writers of the main newspapers, and some of their columnists, have been fearful these days that Lula and the Workers' Party will embark on exaggerated public spending.
The memory of the recession that Brazil plunged into with Dilma Rousseff in the Presidency is still fresh, which, together with the political turmoil, led to her parliamentary dismissal.
An official visit the president made on Friday has resurrected old ghosts.
Lula went to the Petrobras Abreu e Lima refinery, located in Pernambuco, which in the good times of the PT was an emblem of Brazil's potential and which in a short time ended up at the center of the largest corruption scandal on the continent, investigated in Lava Jato.
That the president announced in style that the works would be resumed, with million-dollar investments, when the original project cost several times more than expected and was left half done, has raised the hackles of critics of the PT's worst economic policy. , although Lula has never left orthodoxy.
Lula's recipe to place Latin America's first economy on the path of sustained growth is reindustrialization, that is, similar to what he already applied in his first two terms (2003-2010).
Then it coincided with an unprecedented demand for raw materials from China that represented a priceless boost.
But the Brazilian economy has now been lethargic for a decade, although it will close the 2023 fiscal year with a much better result than predicted at the beginning of that year.
During the last decade the GDP has grown an average of 0.5%.
And the good news that it will close last year with an increase of around 3% (triple that predicted a year ago) is accompanied by the prediction that this year will not be as favorable.
But by 2024 Reuters estimates that it will remain at 1.2%.
The leader of the Brazilian left heads a coalition government that includes the Workers' Party, members of the classical right and a party to the left of the PT, among others.
For Lula, it is necessary to expand and strengthen the industry so that Brazil is less dependent on agribusiness – which is now the main economic sector and is mostly preferred by Jair Bolsonaro – and on exports.
The spectacular 2023 harvests have taken Brazilian exports to a record, with sales of 300 billion dollars, and a surplus of about 85 billion.
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