Carolina Pimentel
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Brasília - Brazil's growth will no longer be like a "hen's flight," that is, discontinuous. This assurance was made, yesterday (28), by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during a ceremony in the Planalto Palace to sign agreements with federal universities for the construction of university centers in the country's five regions.

"Believe it that Brazil has definitely embarked on a course of economic development. And not a "hen's flight" growth, which is up one year and down the next," he remarked.

According to Lula, the country has stability and inflation under control so that it can grow uninterruptedly for the next ten or fifteen years, "admitting the disturbances that can occur in the world economy." The president also affirmed that he will liquidate the country's US$ 2.6 billion debt to the Club of Paris (the group of private banks to which most of the world's foreign debt is owed), as he did with Brazil's debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"We grew and are our own masters and will set our own economic policy matrix and growth policy. We wish to maintain total solidarity with the multilateral agencies, but we want to drive the Brazilian economy at the expense of our most important asset, which is our labor force," he asserted.

Translation: David Silberstein