Porto Alegre, 3/30/2004 (Agência Brasil) - Ministrer of Mines and Energy, Dilma Rousseff, reports that the government's "Electricity for Everyone" will benefit 1.5 million people by the year 2006. According to Rousseff, the program will spend US$2.38 billion (R$7 billion) over a five-year period.

In Porto Alegre, the minister launched a part of the program that will reach a total of 57,000 families in rural areas of Brazil's southernmost state, delivering electricity at a cost of US$57.8 million (R$170 million) in a first phase.

Rousseff also confirmed that today president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will launch an incentive program for alternative sources of energy (Programa de Incentivo às Fontes Alternativas de Energia) (Proinfa). She pointed out that Proinfa will diversify the country's electricity grid through regional solutions in the search for renewable sources of energy, such as wind power, biomass usage and small hydroelectric power plants. (translator: Allen Bennett)