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IIPP convenes Brazilian civil service leaders to discuss procurement strategy
31 July 2024
During a recent trip to Rio de Janeiro on July 21-25, Professor Mazzucato addressed G20 ministers and senior officials in a series of events and meetings in her capacity as Co-Chair of the G20 Group of Experts to the Task Force for a Global Mobilisation Against Climate Change. She also co-hosted a workshop with Brazil’s Minister of Management and Innovation, Esther Dweck, which brought together senior government officials from 26 Brazilian ministries and public sector institutions to discuss opportunities for leveraging public procurement to support Brazil’s agenda of economic and ecological transformation.
The Government of Brazil has committed to an agenda of economic transformation that aims to align economic growth with ambitious climate and inclusion goals. Brazil's G20 presidency seeks to bring these priories to the global stage. To succeed, Brazil and G20 states will not only need to commit to fundamental economic and global governance reform. A parallel agenda of state transformation will also be needed.
Professor Mazzucato and her team, including Sarah Doyle (Director’s Head of Policy), , (IIPP Policy Fellow), (IIPP Policy Fellow), (IIPP Policy Fellow) and (Senior Policy Designer) travelled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last week for a series of G20 meetings and events focused on the state capacity needed to advance ambitious green industrial strategy and financial reform.
Professor Mazzucato spoke at two sessions of the G20 side event hosted by Brazil’s Ministry of Management and Innovation (MGI), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE), Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services (MDIC) and National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES). She delivered a on July 22nd on the changes needed at both the domestic and the global level to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth, emphasizing the need to redesign global governance structures to prioritise equity.
At this event, she also spoke on a focused on the importance of state capacity in shaping markets for inclusive and sustainable growth, with leading economists, including Giovanni Dosi, Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute of Economics at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, , Research Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Research Associate of the Economics Institute at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and , Professor of Economics at the Universidade de Sao Paolo.
On July 23rd, Professor Mazzucato spoke at the of the ˛ą±ô´Ç˛Ô˛µ˛őľ±»ĺ±đĚý , Secretary of Industrial Development, Innovation, Trade and Services, about green industrial strategy in Brazil and the EU, and how global cooperation on green industrial strategy needs to evolve in recognition of the global nature of the climate crisis. She emphasised the importance of maintaining a focus on climate and inclusion challenges in Brazil’s mission-oriented industrial strategy, instead of reverting to the traditional approach of picking key sectors to support.
Prof Mazzucato delivers a public lecture at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
In addition, she delivered a on July 23rd, where she spoke about the need for a new economic theory centred around the concept of the “.” The lecture was organized by Professor , Director of the at UFRJ, and featured Professors , former Executive Secretary of the Executive Secretariat of the National Council for Industrial Development, and , professor at the Institute of Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, as discussants.
In their roles as Co-Chairs of the Professor Mazzucato and met with senior officials, including , Secretary for Economic and Financial Affairs in Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Brazil’s G20 Sherpa, and , Secretary for International Affairs in the Ministry of Finance and coordinator of the G20 finance track. They discussed the strategy for ensuring that the final recommendations of the Group of Experts – on green industrial policy, green finance, and global governance – gain traction in the context of Brazil’s G20 presidency and extend beyond this, for example, to inform Brazil’s COP30 presidency.
Workshop on leveraging public procurement to support Brazil’s economic agenda, co-hosted by IIPP and MGI
Prof Mazzucato and Minister Dweck lead a workshop for senior government officials from Brazilian ministries and public sector institutions on “leveraging public procurement to support Brazil’s economic agenda”.
A key engagement during the week was a workshop co-hosted by Professor Mazzucato and Brazil’s Minister of Management and Innovation, , on July 23rd, which brought together senior government officials from 26 Brazilian ministries and public sector institutions to discuss opportunities for leveraging public procurement to support Brazil’s agenda of economic and ecological transformation. Participants included members of the two commissions on procurement that were recently created by the Brazilian government: the and the .
The workshop included presentations from Minister Dweck on the importance of this work to the government’s broader agenda, and from Professor Mazzucato, Sarah Doyle and Eduardo Spanó on the potential to leverage procurement to shape markets aligned with key policy goals, drawing on preliminary insights from research conducted over the past several months. a Policy Fellow with IIPP, presented insights from IIPP’s work on procurement policy with Camden Council in London, UK. , Secretary of Science, Technology and Innovation and the Health Economic-Industrial Complex (HEIC), shared lessons from – a leading example of how public procurement can both shape new market opportunities and serve societal goals (like health for all). Participants engaged in a rich discussion about the challenges and opportunities for strategic, mission-oriented procurement in Brazil. The discussion highlighted, for example, the importance of building the capacity of procurement professionals as well as the capacity of the markets, of valuing procurement roles and forging stronger connections between procurement and policy teams, and of ensuring that procurement professionals know about the tools they have access to. Participants underlined that the bodies responsible for oversight need to be part of the solution, granting officials the space to take risks. While local margins of preference have been a key focus of procurement policy reform in Brazil recently, the discussion touched on the importance of going beyond this, to align procurement with overarching policy goals. The need to get public-private relationships right, including through thoughtful conditions on private sector access to public procurement opportunities, was also stressed. Participants were interested in learning from existing models, while noting the need for adaptation and flexibility.
This workshop is part of a wider collaboration between IIPP and MGI on the tools, institutions and capabilities that are needed to implement the Government of Brazil’s economic transformation agenda. An initial report was published as part of this collaboration in December, 2023, on Innovation-driven Inclusive and Sustainable Growth: Challenges and Opportunities for Brazil. The discussion paper that informed the workshop will be published shortly, and a final report will be published later this year, exploring the need for changes in the design and governance of public procurement, digital public infrastructure, and state-owned enterprise. This collaboration also includes the development of an applied learning program in partnership with Brazil’s National School of Public Administration (ENAP) to help build public service capabilities.
IIPP's visit to Rio de Janeiro advanced IIPP’s collaboration with the Government of Brazil, surfacing concrete insights on the path forward for designing procurement policy to support the government’s ambitious agenda of economic transformation, while also connecting this work to the government’s global agenda and setting the stage for the forthcoming report of the G20 TF CLIMA Group of Experts.