Brazil’s central bank chief has put his institution at the heart of President Jair Bolsonaro’s sweeping programme of economic reforms, promising to roll back regulation to lure back investors.
Roberto Campos Neto said Brazil wanted to “democratise” the financial sector and usher in more private capital as the country fights an economic downturn.
“We need to reinvent ourselves with private money,” Mr Campos Neto told the Financial Times in his first interview with international media since taking the job in February.
Mr Bolsonaro took office this year after campaigning on a rightwing deregulatory agenda that he said would save the country, once a darling of emerging market investors, from the “brink of socialism”.
However, his economic team is under pressure to show results. While the country has avoided recession this year, growing in the second quarter after the economy contracted in the first three months of the year, unemployment remains high at nearly 12 per cent. Economists point to tepid industrial production, weak investment, lagging technological standards and decaying infrastructure.
