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RIO DE JANIERO, Brazil - During a question-and-answer session with reporters on the opening day of the Latin America Aerospace and Defense (LAAD) show, Brazil Defense Minister Nelson Jobim stressed that Brazil wants to gain defense technology through partnerships with companies outside the country.
"Brazil is not a buying country. We don't go to supermarkets worldwide to buy armaments," Jobim said through an interpreter.
Instead, "Brazil proposes to have partnerships, strategic partnerships," he said, adding that Brazil has created that relationship with France in agreements with French company DCNS for four Scorpène submarines and with Helibras, a Brazil-based company in which EADS subsidiary Eurocopter holds a stake, for 50 helicopters to be built in Brazil. He also mentioned the new armored personnel carrier that's being displayed at the show, to be built by Italian company Iveco in Brazil.
"We also want to develop partnerships with other countries in order to develop our own industry," he said. Brazil wants to gain high technology in the areas of space, cyber and nuclear power and also for equipment to more effectively patrol the Amazon and the country's coastal waters, the reason it is interested in submarines and other vessels, Jobim said. But Brazil should not become "too nationalistic" in developing its defense industry and returning to the isolationism the country experienced decades ago.
Jobim characterized the effect of the worldwide economic downturn on Brazil's budget as a short-term problem, whereas the country's national defense strategy is focused on the medium and long term, he said.
"Some of the main projects that we are developing are all though international financing, therefore independent of short (term) budget," he said. "We do have budget problems of course, but we also have to have investments ... in order to create jobs, to develop technologies and to fuel the national development.
"If we were just purchasing (armaments), then we would be lost," Jobim said. "But we want to go this way of developing what we have."
Brazil had lagged in developing its defense industry, but, said Jobim, "now the government is taking measures so defense is part of the national agenda."
Jobim was also asked about Brazil's involvement in certain peacekeeping measures in Africa and said there have been discussions to create a peacekeeping force for African Union countries.
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