President Lula's speech at the closing of the Brazil-Colombia Business Forum

First of all, I would like to congratulate the Brazilian businessmen and businesswomen who were willing to leave Brazil and take part in this event organized by Colombia and Brazil.

I would like to congratulate the Colombian businesspeople who encouraged and took part in this event.

I would like to congratulate the Colombian ministers, men and women who took part in this event.

I would like to congratulate the Brazilian ministers who came with me.

And I want to greet comrade Jorge Viana.

I want to say that Apex was an institution I created during my first term as President of the Republic. And it has done an extraordinary job, very extraordinary, in all the events I have attended in any country in the world.

I would like to congratulate comrade Márcio Elia, our colleague, the executive secretary of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. In fact, the minister is my vice-president, comrade Geraldo Alckmin.

I would like to congratulate my dear Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, whose responsibility increases every day, in every country I visit, because we are going to have to work a lot harder to make the things we want happen in Brazil.

I have two moments here in my speech with comrade Petro: One, as usual, is a formal, written speech, so that I only say what is necessary. And the other is a speech I want to say directly to you, so that Brazilian businesspeople, Brazilian diplomats, the Brazilian press, the Colombian press, know what I think about integration in South America.

The first thing is that, 20 years ago, I had the pleasure of inaugurating the first Brazil-Colombia Business Round in São Paulo.

At that time, I stated that in a few years, we could double bilateral trade, a mere USD 847 million at the time.

Today our trade is worth over USD 6 billion.

Brazil is already Colombia's third-largest supplier.

We have been chosen as the country of honor at events such as the Aeronautical Fair in Rionegro (July/23), the Coffee, Cocoa, and Agrotourism Fair in Huila (September/23), and the Construction, Engineering, Architecture, and Design International Fair in Medellín next August.

Later this afternoon, I will have the pleasure of attending the Bogotá Book Fair, where Brazil is the guest of honor.

Our agenda has been diversifying, driven by the existing complementarities in the agro-industrial, automotive, chemical, textile, and pharmaceutical sectors.

Among the more than 60 Brazilian companies established in Colombia, 20 are Information and Communication Technology companies operating in cutting-edge areas.

The stock of direct investments from the two countries amounted to almost USD 7 billion in 2023.

These advancements could be even greater.

We are talking about two of the three most important economies in South America.

Together we have 255 million consumers.

Our vocation to unite the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Amazon makes Colombia an indispensable partner.

We are well positioned to face the imperative of the ecological transition and the reindustrialization of our economies.

Brazil's new industrial policy is designed to increase complementarity with our neighbors and strengthen our production chains.

We share the world's largest rainforest, an incomparable biodiversity reserve and a source of valuable knowledge and technologies.

Fostering the bioeconomy requires the proper use of these resources, in harmony with nature and the peoples of the forest, as we agreed at the Amazon Summit last August.

Colombia will be at the center of this debate when it hosts the COP-16 on Biodiversity in Cali later this year.

The use of renewable energies is also central to sustainable development.

When President Petro took part in the Summit of South American Heads of State, he stated that "South America can be the Saudi Arabia of clean energy".

He is absolutely right.

Most of the investment flow between our countries is already concentrated in the energy sector.

Petrobras has been contributing to the development and energy security of Colombia for almost half a century, with investments in research and development of low-carbon fuels.

With a focus on COP-30 on climate change in Belém and the commitment to move towards decarbonization, we are going to increase investments in clean energies.

90% of the electricity consumed in Brazil comes from renewable sources.

We have developed efficient biofuel production technologies and ethanol-based "flex" engines.

Colombia has competitive sugar cane production and can produce biodiesel from palm oil.

The electric buses that circulate in our metropolises should be produced in South America and not on the other side of the world.

Boats for navigating our rivers can also be manufactured within a regional value chain.

We will export sustainability!

We will do this without neglecting the traditional agendas.

In the area of defense, we don't just want to sell planes or ships. We propose to create strategic partnerships, with technology transfer.

The reactivation of the Bilateral Trade Monitoring Commission will be key to eliminating obstacles.

The creation of a binational council between the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry and the Colombian National Business Association is a further step in this direction.

We have signed agreements that will dynamize bilateral cooperation in the areas of tourism, trade promotion, health, agricultural development, communications and connectivity.

I hope that we will soon be able to sign new agreements in the automotive sector, including on regulatory standards.

The internalization of the new Economic Complementation Agreement and the Investment Cooperation and Facilitation Agreement will be central to providing legal security for exporters and investors.

The development of common infrastructures is the basis for a more prosperous and united continent.

The new Growth Acceleration Program includes vital integration routes with our neighbors.

One of them provides for multimodal integration between Manaus and Manta, in Ecuador, passing through Colombia and Peru.

A multimodal bioceanic corridor could easily connect Belém and Macapá on the Atlantic Ocean to Puerto Tumaco on the Pacific Ocean.

Connecting Leticia and Tabatinga by fiber optics within the framework of Brazil's "Norte Conectado" program will integrate our border regions.

We have long distances to overcome. Large Brazilian capitals like Manaus and Boa Vista are closer to Bogotá than to São Paulo.

The direct flight between our capitals, announced today, will expand connection options and help unlock tourism, business and academic and student exchanges.

Ladies and gentlemen,

My visit represents the renewal of a fundamental partnership for the future of South America.

Colombia and Brazil are working to ensure that the public and private sectors work together and that our economies grow and improve people's lives.

The success of this meeting confirms that our entrepreneurs are fully committed to a development project that will guarantee a more sustainable future for all.

My comrades, friends, dear comrade Petro, friends from the Colombian government. We must take responsibility for defining which South America we want, which country we want, and which integration policy we want. We are a colonized continent.

Historically, our minds were turned to Europe, where the colonizers were, and to the more vigorous economies, especially in the United States and South America.

South American governments and Spanish-speaking South American businessmen did not believe in Brazil, or were afraid of Brazil, they treated Brazil as if it were an empire that could put the survival of companies or traditional South American politics at risk.

And Brazil too. Brazil also turned its back on South America. We did not look at Africa and only looked at the European Union and the United States. Everyone there expected that all the wisdom, intelligence, culture, and money to develop our countries would come from there.

After 520 years of existence, we are all still poor. this is continent where unemployment is highest; this continent, along with Africa, with highest malnutrition rates, hunger rates, infant mortality rates and the lesser prospects.

And for this very reason, the United States— a country that should be taking care of these issues by creating jobs in a joint effort with its neighbors— has come up with a policy that wants to build a wall to stop Latin Americans from looking for work — they are so great at advertising these opportunities— treating them like criminals.

Well, comrade Petro, you are the first left-wing president elected in Colombia. I am the first metalworker elected for the presidency of Brazil. So we have to tell the Colombian society — our neighboring countries and the Colombian society — about the type of integration policy we want to come up with to promote the development of Colombia and Brazil.

I am convinced — because I have been lucky enough to serve two terms as President of the Republic, and I was lucky enough to live through the most fruitful moment of integration in South America, from 2002 to 2015, when we all had political differences, but we were all clear that, only together, we could have our industries competitive, we could have economic growth, we could have income distribution policies, we could have more investment in universities and we could generate more jobs, which is what many people want.

All of that was destroyed. I would like to give just one piece of information, comrade Petro: when we arrived, in 2003, at the Presidency of the Republic, the trade flow to all of South America was less than BRL 15 billion. Today it is BRL 42 billion, but it could be BRL 60 billion, it could be BRL 70 billion if we weren't so afraid of each other instead of putting so much of our hopes in others.

What can we do together? Here's to Brazilian businesspeople and here's to Colombian businesspeople: Colombia is not just any country. It is a country of 55 million inhabitants. It is a country with extraordinary cultural strength, a country with extraordinary Amazonic reserve potential, a country with a politicized people.

What is lacking for us to be able to see Colombia as a more virtuous partner than we have so far? What is lacking for Colombia to be able to see Brazil, you know, on this 1.644-kilometer-long border, what is lacking for Colombia to understand that Brazil can be a great partner?

Not just on environmental issues, on the issue of the Amazon, but also on economic development, on partnerships between our universities, on scientific and technological partnerships, and on the partnerships for the construction of social policies. What is lacking?

We Latin Americans are an intelligent people. We are no dumber than any other human being in the world. The others may even be less intelligent than us because they need artificial intelligence. We're going to keep ours. Let's do what we need to do on this continent.

When I decided to come to Colombia, Petro, I came to propose a challenge. It is up to you and me. We need to build a strategic partnership between Brazil and Colombia. Our foreign ministers and our inspection bureaucracy need to sit down and try to see all the obstacles that stand in the way of facilitating our negotiations.

And to show you and me why things are stuck. Why is it so difficult to export to Brazil? Why is it so difficult to import to Colombia? Why is it so difficult?

I learned an extraordinary life lesson during my presidential terms: that with South America and the South America countries, individually, we have many more commercial issues than we have with France, with Italy, with England and other countries, which we think are our great allies.

Where are our best opportunities to exchange industrialized products, with more specialized labor? It is among ourselves. We must find out what is getting in the way. It is political fear, it is the businessman who doesn't want to export coffee to Brazil, or the businessman who doesn't want to export cars to Colombia, or vice versa.

We cannot imagine that we will end our terms leaving our countries the same size as they were when we arrived. We cannot imagine it.

I am convinced that the stronger we are, the more we will be respected by the United States, the more we will be respected by the European Union, the more we will be respected by China, Russia or India.

It is not subservience that makes us grow. What makes us grow is, as Celso Amorim would say, an active and haughty position so that we are respected in the political world and in the business world.

What do businesspeople expect from a major agreement between Brazil and Colombia? First, we have to guarantee something that is sacred in your personal life, in my personal life and in our collective life: that is, legal stability so that the things I do will move forward and I will not have any problems.

Secondly, people want fiscal stability. People want things to happen without anyone doing anything crazy at midnight or two o'clock in the morning. People have to know what is going to happen.

Thirdly, people want economic stability, which is extremely important. It is like any of us here who have money to deposit in the bank, you know? No matter how socialist we are, we are going to choose the bank that pays the most and the bank that gives the most guarantees. We will not just put our money anywhere.

And the fourth thing is social stability. Because without that, we cannot do the other things either. The economic growth of a country, the economic growth of an entrepreneur, the economic growth of a city — it has to be linked to the economic growth of those who work for it.

I don't need to say this: it is not the entrepreneur himself who makes a businessman rich, it is the workers who work for him and the consumers who buy his products. So it doesn't hurt to share a little, to improve. Do what the president of Ford, Henry Ford, said at the beginning of the last century: "I need to pay the workers who work for me a fair wage so that they can buy the product I manufacture". It's simple. It's simple.

It's like understanding a phrase: that a lot of money in the hands of a few means a concentration of wealth, increased poverty, increased prostitution, increased unemployment, increased malnutrition, increased organized crime. But when you have a little money in everyone's hands, then you realize that things start to change.

In our beloved South America, we need a chance, we need a chance. It cannot be that in South America there isn’t a Holland, a Finland, a Norway, a Denmark. It's all poverty. It's all poverty. Year after year goes by. When poverty ends, organized crime starts. When organized crime doesn't start, incarcerations increase, and the ones prison are the poor.

Is it possible that we don't stand a chance? Doesn't God look at this South American continent and see that we are good? And see that we are careful? I think the problem is that we need to define how big we want to be. And my proposal to the Colombian businesspeople and the Brazilian businesspeople is: let's stop being afraid of each other. Let's bear in mind that Brazil and Colombia are in a position to triple our trade flow. Triple it.

Now we need to visit one another more. We need to get to know all of Colombia's industrial potential. We need to know the wealth of Colombian culture, science, technology and universities.

Our universities need to get together to try to create a South American artificial intelligence so that we don't need to import intelligence from others. We need to believe in ourselves.

We can't get up every day saying: "I'm poor, I'm small, I'm unlucky, I'm from South America, I wasn't born in North America". No, people.

Now, Petro, we are no longer from a poor country, from a poor continent. We are now part of the Global South, which gives us a dimension of greatness. Because you know, if you want to discuss the richness of biodiversity; if you want to discuss the richness of the concentration of water; if you want to discuss the richness of energy transition; if you want to discuss the transition to the future of decarbonization of the world, whoever looks at the world will have to look at South America, and whoever looks at South America can't help but see Colombia and Brazil. That is why need to make the most of what we have.

We have a competitive business class, we have well-prepared workers in many places, we have quality universities, we have well-prepared intellectuals, what are we lacking?

Ladies and gentlemen, we lack political decisions. And I am here to say on behalf of Brazil: Brazil has a responsibility because Brazil is also a poor country. But it has the largest economy, the largest population, and the largest production. So Brazil is the one that has to take the initiative to talk to our neighbors, not in search of hegemony. We want to build partnerships and opportunities for everyone. A win-win policy. A policy that isn't just about exporting to us. It's exporting and buying. Because a good policy is a two-way street, where we buy and sell and there isn’t such a large trade deficit.

You know, Mr. Petro, that Brazil even has taken on the responsibility of financing the development of South American countries, in addition to our own, which is the financing of engineering projects. Our lack of infrastructure is impossible. It cannot be that a country the size of Brazil is not to be able to create a bank of our own, a South American bank, a bank to finance development. We can't keep running after the World Bank all the time. We have the capacity to create something of our own, a bank that talks like us, that thinks like us, that knows our problems.

I remember once I went to the United States to discuss an economic issue, I wasn't president then, I was a candidate. And a guy was dictating the rules on Bolivian politics and economics. I said: "Man, have you ever been to Bolivia? Do you know how those people live? Do you know the inhuman conditions those poorest people live in?". No, the guy didn't know, but he guessed about Bolivia. And he knew that Bolivia was poor because it had corruption.

Is that true? There are many rich countries that, instead of helping poor countries, give the money to their NGOs, because they don't give the money directly to the government due to corruption. That's how it was in Haiti. That's why, 15 years ago, the only country that gave cash to Haiti was Brazil. We gave the USD 40 million. Nobody gave anything to them, nobody. So we must change. When a person reaches my age, Petro, there is no long term for me, even though I want to live 120 years. My long term is a short long term.

That is why I don't have time to theorize about things. I am a very practical citizen, because things don't happen the way we want them to. The administrative machine of a country, the administrative machine of a city, they don’t follow the political wishes of the president. They don’t. No matter how good the president may be, no matter how committed the president may be, it takes months between him announcing something and that thing happening.

Sometimes you call the minister to ask: "So, when are we going to inaugurate?". "Oh, we haven't even started, Mr. President, because the process stopped I don't know where". I came here to Leticia in August and promised that we were going to install optic fiber in Leticia. I thought it had already been done, but it wasn't, it won't be ready until May. So, Petro, we don't have much time. My proposal to you and our ministers is that we're going to have to work a bit harder.

We're going to have to talk a bit more, we're going to have to get our universities to talk, we're going to get the Fiocruz Institute in Brazil and the Ministry of Health to talk more with Colombia and with Colombian research institutes. We're going to have to discuss why Colombia, a country with such extraordinary potential, with a president like you who wants to decarbonize the Colombian economy, is not changing the type of fuel it uses.

Brazil has had ethanol since 1974, so we have cars that run on ethanol alone, half and half, 30%, 40%. Colombia can make a quality leap and Brazil is willing to participate with you. Brazil is willing to share with you, Brazil is willing to form partnerships with you. Our banks are willing to work in partnership with you and, above all, your entrepreneurs.

No one has to want to buy the other off. There's no need for a buy off. We can get together, be partners to invest here, to invest in Brazil, to invest in another country, because it just cannot be. I don't know when Colombia will have the chance to elect a president who is committed to the poor and the working people like you are and who is respectful of the business class, because businesspeople have to believe that nobody here is against them. All we want is for things to be shared out a bit. People who work have value.

We have to stand the chance. What is Europe's social welfare state? What is the state? What gives Europe peace of mind? It used to, because now it doesn't. There have already been two world wars. So we need to give our people tranquility. We have an extraordinary opportunity with energy transition.

We have an extraordinary opportunity with the exploration of critical minerals, not for export, but to bring entrepreneurs who can come and produce here in their country, in our country.

That's why, comrade Petro, I want to tell you that I am completely open. I've already told your chancellor and my chancellor that they need to talk, to remove all the obstacles, meet with businesspeople in Brazil, meet with businesspeople in Colombia, unblock all the bureaucracy that gets in the way of investment, imports and exports, to see if one day we can become a rich nation, a powerful nation, a nation that doesn't need favors from the wealthiest nations. That's all, Petro, that's all I think we have to do.

I just want you to know that I came to Colombia to say this: we want to build a strategic relationship with Colombia. And we want to discuss with Colombia ways in which we can foster development in Brazil and Colombia.

I think there are about 200 Brazilian businessmen here. There are more. So it's important that you make your contribution and help us with this. Help, try to build partnerships, let's produce what we can produce here. Not just export, let's produce here, too, and let's buy some of what we produce here. This is development policy, this is industrial policy, this is the policy of a nation that wants to remain sovereign.

So, comrade Petro, comrades in the business community, I apologize for being so long, but I want to tell you. I came back as President of the Republic of Brazil with the aim of doing something different from what I had already done in my eight years in office. To do more and to do it better, and to rebuild the integration of South America, because we've never been as far apart as we are now. And there are lots of people who have gone back to believing: "no, I'm only going to grow if I get on well with the United States". I remember in my country, when Cavalo was Argentina's Finance Minister and Malan was Brazil's Finance Minister, I remember betting on who was friendlier with Clinton, who was friendlier with the United States. "I'm going to dollarize the economy and that will solve the problem."

Do you think that if dollarizing the economy solved the problem, we would have a problem? It's our problem, it's not the currency's problem, it's ours.

So, dear comrades, I ask you, businessmen and women, to the deputies, senators, ministers, guests, we just need to believe in ourselves so that we can be better tomorrow than we are today.

Good luck and many thanks to you.