Brazil is turning to Japan to raise badly needed funds for a new four-year development program that is expected to go into effect this year.
Martus Tavares, the Brazilian budget and planning minister, will visit Tokyo in late April to brief executives of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation on the PPA, as the development program, worth some 1.1 trillion Brazilian reals, or $630 billion, is commonly called, according to sources familiar with the deal. The PPA is still being debated in the Brazilian parliament.
The sources say that in June, four other Brazilian ministers, including the finance minister, plan to visit Tokyo for a seminar aimed at selling the PPA to private-sector Japanese corporate executives and at luring Japanese investments in infrastructure and other projects to be covered by the PPA. The JBIC was created in October through a merger between the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund and the Export-Import Bank of Japan -- the two major government-affiliated foreign lending agencies.