Dilma Rousseff’s BRICS bank nomination gets serious

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday said he intends to nominate Dilma Rousseff, a former Brazilian president herself, to lead the New Development Bank (NDB), more commonly known as the BRICS bank.

“If it is up to me, she will [preside over the bank],” he told CNN Brasil anchor Daniela Lima.

This was the first time a top-level government official had spoken openly about the plan to nominate Ms. Rousseff as NDB head. Over the last few weeks, the idea had widely circulated in the Brazilian press with the generous help of journalists willing to make room for off-the-record sources.

As The Brazilian Report showed in our Brazil Weekly newsletter (for premium and standard subscribers), nominating Ms. Rousseff or someone else for the NDB is part of a larger strategy by the Lula administration to inject more money into infrastructure projects and credit expansion.

The current NDB president is Marcos Troyjo, a Brazilian career diplomat who served as deputy minister for foreign trade and international affairs. He was the co-founder and director of Columbia University’s BRICLab.

BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) appointed Mr. Troyjo to head the Shanghai-based bank for five years, and his term does not...