Brazil: Wanted: infrastructure bonds for long-term finance

In a coordinated series of announcements the Brazilian government has attempted to promote long-term private-sector financing. In the month before Dilma Rousseff assumed the presidency on January 1, her financial team sent clear signals that her administration aimed to have the private sector take a greater role in infrastructure projects.

At the end of November, finance minister Guido Mantega revealed that in 2011 the government would halve the loans it provides to state development bank BNDES, worth about $61 billion in 2010, whose loan advances at subsidized interest rates have been said to be blocking long-tenor private finance.