"We are rebuilding the reserves and we want to be ready for future challenges, we do not want to go through the Covid-19 experience again, so we are betting on the reconstruction of the Treasury's reserves", which fell to historic levels during the covid-19 pandemic.
"We want to be less aggressive in financing, use less external and internal financing, especially internal", explained Vera Daves de Sousa at an investment conference promoted by the financial information agency Bloomberg.
Asked what she will do with the increase in revenue from oil, whose price included in the Budget (59 dollars per barrel) is almost half the current price, at around 100 dollars, Vera Daves de Sousa insisted on the idea of making room for financing economic diversification.
"We are fully committed to diversifying our economy, but for that we need to give commercial banks space to finance the private sector; if we go less to the internal market, we will see more liquidity in the system going to finance private sector investments, for this will make us use less of the space of national banks and compensate with the extra revenue that will come from more expensive oil", explained the minister.
Asked about her forecast of evolution for the price of oil, the Minister of Finance preferred to recognize that the reasons for the evolution of the price are conjunctural.
"The circumstances that brought the price to 100 dollars a barrel are geopolitical, they are not structural, so we want to be conservative; if the geopolitical tension is resolved, with a more peaceful climate, we will see the price fall, so we want to be conservative. , 59 dollars is the price that is in the Budget and everything that we receive above that we want to use in the terms I have described", concluded the minister.
