Brazil's Bolsonaro plans more plants in Amazon – advisor

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro will tackle chronic energy shortages by developing nuclear and hydroelectric power in the Amazon, despite environmental concerns, said the advisor in charge of his projects. Reuters infrastructure.

Oswaldo Ferreira, one of the retired generals who advise Bolsonaro, said that when he was elected, the government would also complete the Brazilian-run Angra 3, ravaged by corruption, located on the coast between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

He said that a Bolsonaro administration would complete the huge Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on the Xingú River, a tributary of the Amazon, which has been criticized for displacing indigenous communities and causing damage to the sensitive biome. Projects stranded for other dams in the Amazon basin could also be revived, he said.

The far right Bolsonaro easily outshone his left-wing rival Fernando Haddad in Sunday's first round vote, winning 46 percent of the vote, compared to 46 percent against Haddad, but with the necessary majority to avoid a second round on 28 October. A Wednesday poll showed Bolsonaro 16 percentage points ahead.

At a press conference held Thursday in Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro confirmed that Paulo Guedes, an economist trained at the University of Chicago, would be his minister of the economy and oversee a "super ministry" bringing together the current Ministries of Finance, Planning and Development. He also said that retired Army General Augusto Heleno Pereira would be the Minister of Defense and conservative Congressman Onyx Lorenzoni, his chief of staff.

AMAZON PROTECTION

Private investors would be called upon to help build the infrastructure that Brazil badly needs, Ferreira said. The country is one of the world's leading exporters of food, but the poor state of the roads and the lack of railways make the transportation of goods to ports slow and costly.

Bolsonaro, 63, popular with powerful evangelical and agricultural pressure groups in Brazil, pledged to take it out of the Paris climate deal because of disagreements over the protection of the Amazon.

Its chief agricultural adviser, Nabhan Garcia, told Reuters on Tuesday that the Bolsonaro government would reduce fines imposed on farmers who violate environmental laws in sensitive areas like the Amazon rainforest.

Environmentalists are also concerned about the Bolsonaro plan to stop recognizing the new Indian reserves and to merge the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment under the control of a representative of the agricultural lobby.

Garcia, a conservative voice well known in Brazilian agriculture, had been introduced to the local press as a leadership candidate for the ministry. Bolsonaro said Thursday that Garcia would not have this post without saying more.

Ferreira said that hundreds of unfinished infrastructure projects, including railways and grain export routes, will be investigated and completed if they are viable with the help of investors through public-private partnerships.

But energy will be a priority.

"If Brazil wants to regain the growth rates we all want, there will be a need for energy that can not be provided by other sources," he said at a meeting. a telephone interview Wednesday night.

Bolsonaro said on Thursday that his team had an economic program "almost ready" to introduce when he took office in January, though he was winning, including a tax overhaul that would not raise taxes but reduce red tape.

Ferreira said that Bolsonaro was favoring the privatization of the transmission and distribution units of the largest Brazilian utility Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA, known as Eletrobras, while maintaining control over the production of electricity. electricity by the state.

He pointed out that a Bolsonaro administration would focus on "clean" energy ranging from hydropower to wind and solar power, and that environmental concerns would benefit from "total attention" .

Ferreira had a less moderate tone in an interview published Thursday by the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo, in which he described environmental regulators as a nuisance.

When the army was in charge of opening the roads in the Amazon during the military regime of 1964-1985, the trees could be felled without permission, but today, to fell a tree, "a handful of people will come to disturb you, "he told the newspaper.