Brazil's Goulart Weak President, Claims Skidmore

Although the Brazilian economy has shown a marked improvement over the last several months, President Joao Goulart is "too much an opportunist to continue this necessary but unpopular economic planning," Thomas Skidmore, research fellow in Latin American Studies, said Tuesday.

Speaking to the Harvard Latin American Association, Skidmore noted that Goulart has failed to continue former President Kubitscheck's program to open the Brazilian interior for industrial investment.

Kubitschek centered his program about the new Brazilian capital, Brazilia, in southeastern Brazil. "Work on the capital has been progressing at a much slower pace since Goulart took office," Skidmore said.

The amount of foreign investment entering Brazil has also slackened because of the volatility of the political situation, Skidmore said. Foreign investment is hindered by the wild fluctuations in the economy; "The rampant inflation precludes any possibility for significant profits," Skidmore said.

Brazil has, however, made a "brilliant recovery from the disasterous inflation of last December," Skidmore noted.

Goulart's economic planners have initiated three programs to curb inflation: they first ended government subsidies on oil and wheat; second strictly out back the hiring of governmental employees to reduce bureaucratic waste; and third, announced a three-year program for economic growth which will work with the Alliance for Progress.

The program is the first Brazilian attempt to comply with the plan outlined by the Alliance.

Skidmore suggested that even these programs were politically oriented because they "favored the poor over the wealthy." The success of Goulart's measures is due to the results of the January plebiscite which restored the presidential powers removed in 1961.