Fighting the Good Fight
Dec 8, 2003
Brazil’s trade and industry minister has been in the
job barely a year and already has something to show for his time in
government. But Luiz Furlan still has much to do before the country
emerges as a major trading nation.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made some
surprising choices when he assembled his cabinet a year ago. One of
his more interesting decisions was to pick Luiz Furlan, a
millionaire São Paulo businessman, to head the amorphous
development, industry and trade ministry. Furlan, 56, the boss of
Sadia, Brazil’s largest poultry company and a big exporter, hardly
seemed the right man to take charge of a slow-moving bureaucracy in
Brasília. He is a typical
Paulistabusinessman - a blunt, no-nonsense kind of
man used to making decisions quickly and having them carried out
immediately.
Neither did a man born to great wealth - Furlan’s
grandfather founded Sadia 50 years ago - seem a natural choice
for a government led by the left-wing Workers Party. Furlan says,
“I did not have any acquaintance with President Lula and was not
affiliated with any political party. I am fresh to...
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