Guru of the Network: Businessmen are in the government's pocket.
Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, who advises Marina Silva, says it's difficult to obtain business support for the former senator because representatives of the productive sector have been co-opted by the federal government. "What saddens me is seeing a large part of Brazilian businesspeople under the tutelage of the government and neutralized in their capacity for criticism because they depend on favors, subsidies, and protection offered by the government. Brazilian businesspeople, for the most part, behave like subjects and not like citizens," he says, probably forgetting about Itaú, owned by Neca Setubal, and Natura, owned by Guilherme Leal.
247 - Economist Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, Marina Silva's main economic advisor, gave an interview to journalist Eleonora de Lucena, from Folha (read here (The full text), in which he predicted that the Sustainability Network will have great difficulty in obtaining corporate support – even though it already has the support of major economic groups, such as Itaú, owned by Neca Setúbal, and Natura, owned by Guilherme Leal.
A former professor at USP, Insper, and Cambridge, he points to an alleged co-optation of businesspeople by the federal government. "What saddens me is seeing a large part of the Brazilian business community tutored by the government and neutralized in its capacity for criticism because it depends on favors, subsidies, and protection offered by the government. The Brazilian business community, for the most part, behaves like a subject and not like a citizen. The government opened this marketplace for deals. It began negotiating protection tariffs for the sector on a case-by-case basis, opening the coffers of state banks to businesspeople. How can a businessman who is dependent on credit from a state bank publicly criticize the government? He is stifled. The business elite is in the government's pocket," says Giannetti da Fonseca.
In the same interview, Giannetti also states that Marina would be "less statist" than President Dilma Rousseff. "I don't understand a government that places so much emphasis on a bullet train and neglects the issue of basic sanitation," says the economist, criticizing the Dilma government.
He states that the model would be similar to that of the second term of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the first term of former president Lula, anchored in the three pillars of floating exchange rates, fiscal responsibility, and inflation targets. "We're not going to reinvent the wheel. We're going to continue what was working very well in Brazil, which is the three-pillar model," he says. ""That's when the foundations for better growth in Brazil were laid. FHC privatized, broke up monopolies, ended discrimination against foreign capital, and created the Fiscal Responsibility Law. In Lula's first government, the microeconomic agenda was formidable because it improved the business environment: new bankruptcy law, fiduciary alienation, payroll-deducted loans. Things were going well."