The new Brazilian fisheries department is set to "transform fisheries into one of the focal points" of the government's economic policy, says department head José Fritsch.

Mr. Fritsch, who will become Brazil highest fisheries authority, told La Tribuna he was optimistic about managing the sector with a specific policy and the support of the fisheries sector in all regions. Centralising fisheries management, which was previously controlled by several ministries, will allow for the creating of adequate policies to "increase exports and domestic consumption," said Mr. Fritsch.

Mr. Fritsch first action was to announce the creation of a National Fisheries and Aquaculture Council, which will not only represent the sector, but also environmental interests and the community as a whole.

Tsuneo Okida, leader of São Paulo's State Fishermen Federation, said the creation of a new fisheries department was the most important event for the sector in the last 10 years.

“The National Fisheries and Aquaculture Council should benefit 1,800 coastal fishermen from Baixada Santista region, because one million hectares of fresh water in São Paulo were available for developing aquaculture now that the technology was available”, said Mr. Okida.

Maria Teresa de Oliveira, a researcher and one of the country's leading authorities on the subject, echoed Mr. Okida’s optimism saying that Brazil has the necessary conditions "and competent staff for the sector to progress".

José Fritsch said incoming President Lula found it hard to believe that with 8,000 kilometres of coast “Brazilian fisheries were managed at quiet a low ministerial level". Lifting the profile of fisheries within the government would help to boost output.

Fritsch comes from the southern state of Santa Catarina where 60% of the country's fishery activity is concentrated. Itajaí alone accounts for 530 of the country's fishing vessels, which generate 20,000 jobs. Another important centre is São Paulo, which has 470 kilometres of coasts, abundant rivers and one million hectares of fresh water in dams.

However despite the abundance of resources, Brazil’s average per capita fish consumption is well below the international average, writes La Tribuna. (FIS/MP).-

Although it has one of the largest maritime coasts in the world, on which the economies of dozens of Brazilian cities and towns depend, “fisheries are not producing enough” so the Government plans to introduce a policy for sustainable growth and development, including specific measures for each region.

"Despite the immensity of Brazilian rivers and lakes and of the 200 miles of territorial sea waters, we do not produce the quantity of fish we consume. At present, each Brazilian national eats an average of just seven kilos of fish per year, practically half of what is recommended for a healthy diet," says President elect Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva.

"It is difficult to believe that countries such as Peru and Chile produce more fish than Brazil. It is not because there is not enough fish in our waters; it is because we do not have a real policy to promote the sustainable development of industrial and coastal fisheries." President Lula told local media this policy was vital to help boost local food production and combat hunger and poverty. Investment in the sector could generate employment and improve quality of life.

The first step is to create the National Fishery and Aquaculture Secretariat, which will integrate all Government ministerial offices related to the sector. This agency will develop the National Plan for Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture Development to enable medium and long-term sector planning. IBAMA will continue to control fishing activities but will be assigned a budget allowing it to perform its duties correctly.

A Fishery Fleet Renovation Programme will be implemented and a Professional Training Programme for Fishermen will create a workforce specialised in maritime, river, industrial or artisanal fishing, and in aquaculture.

President Lula is promising investment to expand fish landing, storage and trade through Fishing Terminals that will encourage value-added fish production. One of the most important measures in his programme is the creation of specific credit lines in each region to support artisanal fishing and aquaculture. Mr. Lula believes that if the fishery sector can focus on development "it will play a predominant role in generating employment and income as well as helping fight hunger," as well as safeguarding the country's natural resources. (FIS/MP).-

-0-      Chicago Tribune      Brazilians' rejoiced over the inauguration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on New Year's Day with all the unwarranted optimism of Cubs fans in spring training.      Indeed, there's probably reason to expect the Cubs will have a better 2003 than South America's largest nation. This is a country in desperate need of economic reform and an expansion of its export markets. It's hard to see how that will come from the new president, a leftist who has crusaded against free trade.      And yet hundreds of thousands in Brasilia gave Lula, as the new president is popularly known, a rousing welcome. Polls indicate that nearly 80 percent of the population believes the new government will be "good to excellent."      There is one reason for Brazil to feel good: Lula's inauguration Wednesday marked the first time in 40 years that one civilian president in Brazil has handed power to another peacefully. ...      A Brazilian newspaper called Lula's challenge, to balance populist expectations and fiscally responsible policies, "walking on a knife's edge." The U.S. may be tempted to wait for him to slip off the edge, but the potential economic consequences are too grave. Better to offer a hand and hope that Lula, unlikely as it may be, is open to persuasion.

Friday, Jan. 3, 2003

Lula's first day in office as Brazil's president was a left-wing lulu. He started at breakfast with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and ended the day with dinner with Fidel Castro, both in town for his inauguration.

The alliance of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Cuban communist dictator and Venezuela's embattled crypto-communist is an "axis of good," Chavez claims. Such an alliance, the Washington Times warns, could threaten to throw a roadblock in the way of America's plans to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas stretching from Alaska to the tip of Argentina by 2005.

During their breakfast meeting Chavez asked Lula da Silva to send technical experts from Brazil's state-owned oil company to replace some of the 30,000 Venezuelan state oil workers who have joined a crippling nationwide strike aimed at driving him out of office. Lula said he would think about it.

And before his dinner with Lula, Castro told Associated Press Television News that Brazilian-Cuban relations would grow stronger now that Brazil has its first elected leftist president.

But experts told the Times that Lula's efforts to accommodate Castro and Chavez could be nothing more than calculated political window dressing, because both are hugely popular among Brazil's far left.

They noted that Lula da Silva, 57, has angered his party's left wing by naming fiscal moderates to Cabinet posts but needs the party's help to push his programs through Congress, where he lacks a majority.

Those who view Lula's use of free enterprise as a sign that he might not be as far to the left as he appears to be forget that this is the same tactic Lenin used in 1921, when he adopted the so-called New Economic Program to jump-start Moscow's crippled economy.

Lenin supported the efforts of the peasants and other Russians to trade and to produce in a largely private-enterprise economy. He used the policy to sucker Russian peasants and capitalists into cooperating with Moscow. When the economy recovered, the harsh communist economy was re-established, and the peasants and the capitalists ended up in the gulag, or dead.

"Embracing Castro and Chavez, the symbols of anti-U.S. influence in Latin America, gets Silva political capital in Brazil," Stephen Habra, a Latin American specialist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, told the Times.

"But this is a dangerous game. You go too far one way or the other and this will blow up in your face."

Coining the phony "axis of good" term after Lula was elected in October, Chavez hailed the victory and said Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba should team up, supposedly to fight poverty.

But Brazilian political scientists scoffed at the possibility of any "axis of good" being created by the meetings of Lula, Castro and Chavez.

"There is no way this represents the beginning of Chavez' 'axis of good' and much less the 'axis of evil' imagined by right-wing Americans," Luciano Dias, a political scientist at the Brasilia-based Brazilian Institute of Political Studies, told the Times. www.newsmax.com

By Bradley Brooks UPI Business Correspondent From the Business & Economics Desk Published 1/3/2003 2:56 PM

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- The U.S. trade representative told Brazil's new government this week that the two countries should work closely together to battle the European Union and Japan on agricultural subsidies.

At first blush, this may seem a preposterous suggestion: Brazil is one of the harshest critics of U.S. import barriers and especially the $190 billion farm subsidy bill President Bush signed in May.

But on a closer look, it is clear the United States has much to gain -- and Brazil can only reap benefits -- should the two powerhouses of the Americas work together to battle protectionism worldwide.

Robert Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, was in Brazil for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's inauguration Wednesday. He told the country's new finance and foreign relations ministers that the Bush administration wants Lula, as he is commonly known, on board to fight subsidies, said Donna Hrinak, the U.S. ambassador to Brazil.

Lula and his team have repeatedly criticized the United States on its farm subsidies. But Hrinak pointed out -- as U.S. officials often have -- that until EU and Japanese subsidies are addressed, there will be no progress on the issue.

Thus, U.S. officials reason with Brazilians and other emerging economies, it is better to work around U.S. protectionism in the short term to achieve just trade policies in the long term.

"We understand the Brazilian position. But the U.S. cannot review its agricultural programs -- we cannot reduce the subsidies -- if Europe and Japan won't do the same thing," Hrinak said.

She also underscored the fact that the farm subsidy programs of the EU and Japan are far greater than those of the United States.

Zoellick told the officials the United States and Brazil should work together in the World Trade Organization to push through cuts in agricultural protectionism worldwide.

Brazil's outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso was never shy when it came to battling the United States and the EU on trade barriers, and the country's aggressiveness -- if in rhetoric only -- will increase with Lula.

One of the hallmarks of Lula's campaign for the presidency -- and a theme highlighted in his inaugural address -- was the call to create a more just trade climate worldwide, to be rid of "scandalous" trade barriers.

Brazil, like many emerging economies, depends upon the export of raw goods for its economy.

Should hurdles to the richest markets in the world -- the United States and the EU -- seem passable in the future, Brazil could well be enticed to ease the Bush team's work on selling the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the U.S. proposal before the WTO to eliminate tariffs on manufactured goods by 2015.

C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, told United Press International shortly after the U.S. proposal on eliminating manufacturing tariffs in November that trade liberalization has to be pushed through as a complete package.

"The agricultural and non-agricultural sectors can only be liberalized together," Bergsten said.

The Bush Administration may be realizing this as it works against stiff resistance to both the FTAA and the manufacturing tariffs proposal.

The EU stamped the tariff proposal as unrealistic, given that the Third World will never agree to knock down protection for its nascent manufacturing sector if the First World won't agree to lower agricultural barriers.

Should the United States and Brazil lead a global campaign against agriculture protection, it could well bring poorer countries on board for the elimination of manufacturing tariffs.

A potent partnership between Brazil and the United States could also work wonders for the FTAA talks, of which the two countries are now co-chairs.

If the United States can convince Brazil that it wants to see agricultural barriers lowered around the globe, Brazil may well bring the rest of Latin American on board and deliver the FTAA by its proposed deadline of 2005.

The Bush administration is also aware that a partnership between the United States and Brazil on reducing trade protectionism is the best route to keeping Brazil in a political sphere it feels comfortable working with.

Much has been made of Lula's leftist roots. His first meeting upon taking office this week were with Venezuela's populist President Hugo Chavez, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

While that may raise red flags in Washington's more conservative circles, it shouldn't be overblown.

Lula has made moderate choices for his top economic posts, his social proposals on reducing poverty -- while unrealistic -- are certainly nothing in which to find fear, and he has clearly stated his government will remain fiscally austere, though that remains to be seen.

Lula's friendliness with Chavez and Castro shouldn't translate into his acceptance of their political actions, which he has repeatedly rejected in the Brazilian media.

Lula is at the head of one of the world's largest leftist parties -- the Workers' Party -- and arguably Latin America's most organized political outfits. Some 75 percent of Brazilians think his government will be "excellent."

Additionally, there is a solid balance of power in Brazil, where the outgoing president's party and others will act as a strong check against Lula, as is the case in any healthy democracy.

While Zoellick's appearance as the U.S. representative to Lula's inauguration was seen as a political slight, his message of future teamwork on farm subsidies worked to soothe ruffled feathers.

Brazil's new Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues told reporters that his visit with Zoellick, while mostly a friendly courtesy visit, was "more concrete" than he imagined.

Zoellick told Rodrigues that Brazil has a great importance for the United States, especially when it comes to international trade negotiations.

But Rodrigues replied that until the United States opens its market to Brazilian agricultural goods, all other trade negotiations -- the FTAA, the manufacturing tariff proposal -- would be delayed.