Edmilson Moutinho dos Santos, Coordinator of the RCGI’s Energy and Economic Policies Program, grants a long interview to the Spanish newspaper
The Monday, May 28, edition of the El País newspaper published an interview with Professor Edmilson Moutinho dos Santos regarding the crisis triggered by the truckers’ strike, which has already lasted for nine days. Moutinho is the Coordinator of the Energy and Economic Policies Program of the FAPESP Shell Research Centre for Gas Innovation (RCGI) and a professor at the Energy and Environment Institute of the University of São Paulo (IEE/USP). Click here to see the interview.
Moutinho states that there is no immediate and definite solution for the crisis in the short term. In the face of that situation, he argues that within the governmental milieu only Petrobras would have the technical expertise and intelligence information for presenting short-term solutions.
“Given the large scale of the crisis and the complete lack of political engagement of the other government agencies – and the even greater limitations of all of the other stakeholders – partial short-term solutions can only be obtained through Petrobras,” Professor Moutinho told the Spanish newspaper.
The economist admitted that, at the present time, there is no way to be able to count on the Petrobras mechanisms at their best. “The company is still reeling. But history, once again, is being repeated: Brazil urgently needs ‘more Petrobras.’” From his viewpoint, at this critical moment, one has to think of short-term solutions, that will we must think of short-term solutions that will almost necessarily mean “more Petrobras” and, also, of medium- and long-term objectives: market restructuring, diversification of economic agents, the creation of competition, etc. And all of that means “less Petrobras”.
“Therefore, there are conflicts of interest to be managed during these decision-making times. Remembering that the rescuing effect of ‘more Petrobras’ in the short term will, once again, stir up the same nationalistic forces that tend to be opposed to the medium- and long-term ‘less Petrobras’.”