Brazil's na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment bank BN­DES has out­laid US$1.3 bil­lion in cred­it dur­ing the first in­stall­ment of its In­o­va Petro fund­ing scheme. The pro­gramme, a joint ini­tia­tive be­tween BN­DES, state-run oil com­pa­ny Petro­bras and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment's tech­nol­o­gy agency Finep, end­ed its first three-month phase on No­vem­ber 30, BN­DES said in a note.

"The ob­jec­tive is to sup­port the lo­cal pro­duc­tion chain and con­tribute to the ful­fill­ment of the lo­cal con­tent pol­i­cy through greater com­pet­i­tive­ness and sus­tain­abil­i­ty," the lender said. Un­der fed­er­al gov­ern­ment rules, a min­i­mum of 65 per cent and as much as 95 per cent of all Brazil­ian oil and gas projects must be lo­cal­ly owned and op­er­at­ed.

The bank added that fund­ing dur­ing In­o­va Petro's first phase in­clud­ed 58 projects with the over­all out­lay falling just short of the 3bn reais made avail­able in Au­gust. The next cred­it in­stall­ment is ex­pect­ed to be made avail­able in Jan­u­ary fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of busi­ness plans from in­ter­est­ed com­pa­nies.

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