Speech by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the Saudi-Brazilian Roundtable Meeting in Riyadh

It is not very easy to close an event between ministers and businesspeople after more than 20 people have spoken. And not having heard any of the speeches I may end up repeating things. I will try not to do so. When I was in Saudi Arabia in 2009, in a meeting we had with Saudi businesspeople and then King Abdullah, I said that Brazil was not going around the world only seeking investments or looking to sell its products. I tried to demonstrate the idea that we need to build a new relationship among countries, a new relationship among businesspeople, and a new relationship among governments. And I started to work on the idea that we are traveling to try and build partnerships. It is not just a matter of knowing how much of their funds Saudi Arabia can invest in Brazil. It is also about knowing how much Brazilian businesspeople can invest in Saudi Arabia. It is this exchange and this new way of making foreign policy that can bring some change to the face of world commerce.

Brazil will host three big events next year. And a fourth one now. Brazil will be responsible for organizing the G20, the most important meeting of the heads of State of the world’s largest economies, to discuss issues that can represent the betterment of the future of humanity. Brazil will host the BRICS in 2025, a forum created not long ago, and it was with great satisfaction that I greeted Your Highness, the crown prince, for Saudi Arabia has become the most recent member of BRICS. I told the crown prince that Saudi Arabia’s entry to BRICS takes into account that we need the country’s support to strengthen the BRICS bank so that we can change the face of multilateral banks for them to discuss financing the development of the poorer countries, without exorbitant interest rates which end up annihilating any possibility they may have to make investments.

At the same time, Brazil will be hosting COP 30 in 2025. Just for the fact that it will be held in the Amazon, this event already deserves an extraordinary spotlight. The whole world talks about the Amazon. The whole world talks about the forest, and about Brazil’s fresh water. Well, the world will get to know what the Amazon actually is. The Amazon is not only those million trees that one sees when flying over it in an airplane. Down below, there are many critical minerals that Brazil has not yet explored. There you will find planet Earth’s richest biodiversity, still totally unexplored. But you will also find men and women who need to survive. Our indigenous peoples, fishermen, riverside populations, people who generally do not appear in the public opinion polls, or the studies made by our Geography Institute. These people, however, are Brazilians who need the Amazon to be preserved, but also to have the possibility of development, to generate means for them to have a dignified life.

And I count on Saudi Arabia not only to help Brazil organize G20 but also to help us organize COP30. It will be a great opportunity for us to have the crown prince for an official visit so that we can follow up on the meeting we are having here.

A successful policy starts with the first step. I was the first president of the Republic, after Emperor Dom Pedro I, to visit some of the Arab countries. It was during my first term that we tried to establish a relationship between Arab countries and South America, seeking to unite the continents to reduce the cultural differences between us and to share development and investment policies.

I would like to take the opportunity at this forum, in November 2023, here in Saudi Arabia, to state that in ten years the world will say that, if Saudi Arabia is the most important country in the production of petroleum and gas, in ten years Brazil will be known as the Saudi Arabia of green energy, of renewable energy. Because this is what we are working towards.

We have settled a few agreements. First, we will reduce deforestation until 2030. We want to reach zero deforestation in the Amazon. Second, as Rui Costa, Fernando Haddad, and other ministers have stated, we will do everything possible to make Brazil the center of the world in the production of alternative energy. Because I believe we must all work with much responsibility to decarbonize our planet so that we can live with more dignity, with better life quality, and not be afraid because we are destroying the house where we live.

It is in this regard that our visit here becomes important. You know that Brazil is not only a country of soccer. You know that Brazil is not only a country of carnival. That our country has a good intellectual ground, a good scientific and technological ground, and a solid financial system, with private banks, investment banks, retail banks, and five large public banks, and that Brazil is a country with many cutting-edge businesses.

This is the challenge we want to propose to our friends in Saudi Arabia. That you may build partnerships with our businesspeople so that Brazilian companies can foster development in Brazil, but also in Saudi Arabia. That we may sell to the world products with higher quality so that the world may survive. This is why I can see a difference between when I visited Saudi Arabia in 2009 and today. At that time, our commercial trade was at the scale of 1 billion. Now it is 8 billion. And this is very little when we consider the size of Saudi Arabia and the size of Brazil.

The challenge I and His Excellency, the crown prince, now pose is that our ministers and our businesspeople do not stop at this meeting. This meeting is only the first one. We are now committed to having dozens of other meetings and trips over the next year so that our businesspeople may come to Saudi Arabia and discuss with the businesspeople from here.

We could, for instance, promote cross-investments between our Petrobras and Saudi Arabian companies to produce fertilizers, and offer the world a guarantee in the face of the uncertainties generated by war between Russia and Ukraine. We are talking about economic growth and development, while part of the world is talking about war. War does not bring anything but misery and death, and the destruction of what people have built with much sacrifice.

When a country declares war, it is declaring the failure of their capacity for dialogue. And I was born into politics by promoting dialogue. I believe in dialogue. It is much cheaper, much wiser, and much more efficient to spend some hours at a negotiation table than going out shooting haphazardly, killing innocents, killing women, killing children and men.

This meeting is an invitation to the ministers of Saudi Arabia who have already been to Brazil, to go back and visit again. It is an invitation to the Brazilian ministers: you may not think that I like seeing you sitting in your offices. Because each minister, when they sit still in their offices, the only thing they do is have people over asking for things. There is never anyone offering anything. So get out of your offices, go to work, sell the products that Brazil has to offer. And go out to buy products others have that may interest Brazil.

And this is why I am so happy with this meeting. Because when I first became President of Brazil in 2003, our country did not have U$ 100 billion in trade balance. And I believe that if Brazil takes on responsibilities according to its size and its importance in geopolitics — I would like to say so to our ministers and businesspeople present here — we can dream that, in 2030, we may have a trade balance of a trillion dollars. We are the only ones who can say, according to our capacity for work, that this is not true.

In this forum, Saudi Arabian businesspeople have heard about Brazilian agriculture. They have heard about Industry — the president of the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo, the most important industrial center in the country, is here. Much has been said by the bankers who are present. And I want to tell you this: we can only do things if we believe. We must not dream small, because those who dream small reach small. We must dream big in order to accomplish great policies the size of Saudi Arabia and the size of Brazil.

I want to tell you that I will return to Brazil, after the end of COP 28, in Dubai, certain that the meeting of today represents the beginning of a new history in the relationship between Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

For this reason, I would like to commend the businesspeople who have come here. To commend Jorge Viana, from Apex, who organized the event, and the Saudi Arabian government. I would like to tell you that we have some obligations towards the world. At G20 next year, we want to face the issue of inequality and the issue of combating poverty and absolute poverty. We want to face the climate issue: we need to prove that human beings are effectively the most intelligent animal creatures on planet Earth and that they will not deny this by acting towards self-destruction, by refusing to take care of the habitat in which they live. And we will vigorously discuss the climate issue. Because in Brazil we take the issue of renewable energy very, very seriously.

You already know that 90% of our electricity comes from completely renewable sources. Brazilian energetic potential is enormous, and we want to partner with you. We want you to become partners of Brazil in the development of this new matrix the world needs and dreams about: we can provide it.

So I want to tell you this: I am certain that this meeting will change the history of the relationship between Brazil and Saudi Arabia. May every minister of Saudi Arabia and Brazil, and every businessperson, be sure about that. And that from this meeting, dozens of others follow, because we — myself and His Highness, the crown prince — are committed to making sure you implement a more daring policy, a braver one, because the world is in need of good examples. And Brazil and Saudi Arabia can be the examples of dynamism that the world requires.

Thank you very much to my comrade Jorge Viana, and many thanks to our Arab friends from Saudi Arabia for being here. We do not wish to simply sell, we want to buy. We want to build true partnerships. To produce things together. So that both countries can profit together.

Greetings and many thanks.