The president of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), Paulo Rabello de Castro, and the director-general of the French Development Agency (AFD), Rémy Rioux, signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at promoting cooperation between both institutions. The document proposes sharing experiences in green finance and the role and future of development banks. Also on the agenda are lines of credit and co-funding focused on climate adaptation and/or mitigation and cooperation to implement the Paris Agreement within the scope of the UN Convention Framework on Climate Change.

 

This is the second document of the kind signed between the two institutions. The first memorandum, signed in 2012, resulted in a line of credit with AFD in the amount of US$ 206 million in 2014. The funds, already fully disbursed, financed five wind farms, the construction of a biomass-fired thermoelectric plant and expansion of another, and the modernization of two hydroelectric plants.

 

“You Brazilians and BNDES in particular are a very powerful instrument of development. We have much to learn here, especially as international openness is one of the priorities of our new government (President Emmanuel Macron),” stated Rioux during the meeting with Rabello on Friday 15. The BNDES president said the moment is timely since “Brazil is starting to pull out of recession and will need to seek new funding sources and new operating strategies.”

 

The French executive invited the BNDES president to attend the celebrations of the second anniversary of the Paris Agreement in France on December 12, when a major international climate conference will be held. Working groups are producing reports on the subject and, according to Rioux, it would be an honor to have BNDES at the event.

 

The meeting preceded the seminar O papel dos bancos de desenvolvimento na implementação do Acordo de Paris: o exemplo das finanças do clima no Brasil (The role of development banks in implementing the Paris Agreement: the example of climate finance in Brazil), held in the afternoon, organized by AFD with the participation of BNDES. Also present at the signing ceremony were BNDES executives Carlos Thadeu de Freitas, managing director of the Financial and International Division, Selmo Aronovich, deputy managing director, Leonardo Botelho, head of the Department of Fundraising and Institutional Relations, and manager Vivian Correa Pereira.