SAO PAULO: France will help fund a new metro line in Brazil’s commercial hub Sao Paulo, in one of two major accords signed on Friday during President Francois Hollande’s trip to promote trade.
Sao Paulo state, the wealthiest in this Latin American powerhouse, will also make what Hollande called a “major” investment near Paris in a project that aims to create 2,500 French jobs.
“I think the metro must be built quickly,” Hollande quipped Thursday as he got a taste of the horrendous Sao Paolo traffic, when he flew in from Brasilia for an encounter with the local French community.
Hollande met with Sao Paulo state governor Geraldo Alckmin to sign the deal for a $410 million investment by France’s development agency to build a metro between the airport and the city centre.= The second agreement concerned what the French leader described as “a major Brazilian investment” of some $890m from Sao Paulo to build a world trade center near Paris’ airport.
Hollande then joined his Brazilian counterpart Dilma Rousseff at a forum attended by business leaders from both countries.
“I want to see more French investments in Brazil,” Hollande told the forum. “I also want Brazilian investments in France.”
Expressing full confidence in Brazil’s potential, he renewed his call for doubling two-way trade, currently valued at around $9 billion, by 2020 based on technology transfer.
He also suggested regular bilateral consultations to further that aim.
“To double our trade by 2020, a target set by our two heads of state, infrastructure contracts, the strategic axes of our partnership, are important; energy, space, defense, high technology,” France’s minister for foreign trade Nicole Bricq said.
She stressed the role French medium-sized companies must play in responding to the aspirations of Brazil’s new middle class for a “better quality of life”, particularly in health and sustainable urban life.
France is the fifth biggest investor in Brazil, with 600 French firms operating in the world’s seventh largest economy.
Insisting Brazil’s economy is fundamentally strong despite its anemic GDP growth, 2.5 percent expected this year, Rousseff also lobbied for French investment in this emerging power of 200 million people.
Both she and Hollande stressed the importance of nailing down a free trade deal between the European Union and South American trading bloc Mercosur.
AFP
