The President of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), Aloizio Mercadante Oliva, will visit the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Chile’s capital on Monday, September 4 to give a keynote lecture entitled “The role of development banks in the transformation of the Latin American development model.”
The prominent Brazilian economist and politician will be received by ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, who will offer welcome remarks and will hold a dialogue with Mercadante afterwards.
The presentation, which will begin at 11 a.m. local time in Chile (UTC/GMT-3), is part of a Keynote Lecture Series organized to commemorate ECLAC’s 75th anniversary.
The President of the BNDES is an economist who graduated from the University of São Paulo (USP, 1976), with a Master’s degree in Economic Sciences from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp, 1989) and a doctorate in Economic Theory from the Institute of Economics – Unicamp (2010), where he also worked as a professor.
Mercadante participated in the founding of the Workers’ Party (PT) in 1980, where he served as Vice President and Director of International Relations of the National Executive Commission. He also participated in the founding of the CUT trade union center (Central Única dos Trabalhadores) and served for two terms as a Federal Deputy representing the PT (1991-1995 and 1999-2003), acting as Chairman of the Committee on the Economy.
In addition, he was a candidate for Vice President of the Republic with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the 1994 presidential elections, served as Senator of the Republic for São Paulo in 2003-2011 and President of the Mercosur Parliament from 2007 to 2010.
In subsequent years, he served as Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation (2011-2012); Minister of Education (2012-2014); Chief of Staff of the Presidency of the Republic (2014-2015); and again as Minister of Education (2015-2016).
In other positions, Aloizio Mercadante also chaired the Perseu Abramo Foundation.
The Keynote Lecture Series began on July 24 with a presentation by Arancha González Laya, Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), while August 18 marked the turn of renowned Colombian economist and former ECLAC Executive Secretary, José Antonio Ocampo. In this series taking place through February 2024, other prominent thinkers will visit the Commission’s headquarters in Santiago to present their views and ideas about the challenges facing the world and the region. The full list of lecturers is available here.
Members of the media are invited to attend this keynote lecture by Aloizio Mercadante, which will be held in the Raúl Prebisch conference room at ECLAC’s headquarters (Av. Dag Hammarskjöld 3477, Vitacura, Santiago, Chile). Journalists must have their media credentials or IDs with them to gain entry and must get accredited in advance by sending an email to prensa@cepal.org.
The lecture will be in Portuguese, with simultaneous interpretation in Spanish and English.
What: Keynote lecture by Aloizio Mercadante, President of the BNDES.
Who:
When: Monday, September 4, 2023, 11:00 a.m. local time in Chile (UTC/GMT -03:00).
Where: ECLAC’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile (Av. Dag Hammarskjöld 3477, Vitacura). Raúl Prebisch conference room.
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