São Paulo, 8/28/2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Joseph Stiglitz, a former director at the World Bank and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics, speaking at the Council for Economic and Social Development, declared that Brazil's central problem is how to put growth policies in place. He said all emerging nations face the same problem. "It would be positive to get the International Monetary Fund to support those policies and sign an agreement with that institution. On the other hand, a bad agreement is worse than no agreement," said Stiglitz.

He pointed out that a year before the crisis in Argentina, "There were a series of bad agreements between Argentina and the IMF. And there is no doubt that those agreements worsened the crisis."

Siglitz also said that the concept of the primary surplus has to be redefined. "Sometimes it is better to have a deficit with economic expansion policies. When there is a downturn you have to compensate with expansion policies," he said. (AB)