‘The State has to act where the private sector arm is shorter’, says Zeina Latif

Doctor in economics from USP, Zeina Latif, 54, last week took charge of the Economic Development Secretariat of the State of São Paulo, responsible for attracting investments to the state and generating jobs and income.

The former chief economist at XP Investimentos says that she accepted the challenge because she trusted Governor Rodrigo Garcia (PSDB).

When swearing in, the pre-candidate for reelection, said he chose to keep the secretariat under female leadership, with a “modern and technical team to unite liberal economic goals and social responsibility in the conduct of public management”.

Latif did not make changes in the team of her predecessor, Patricia Ellen, and says she is ready to dialogue with other public bodies and the private sector, with whom she intends to “shorten the ends”.

“It’s no use offering a qualification course that will use taxpayer resources and won’t increase employability or won’t help the person get better pay”, says Latif.

How did you receive the invitation to take over the secretary? I am part of João Doria’s economic team and, therefore, I already knew the governor on other occasions. The invitation came that, at first, I was worried about my lack of experience in the public sector, but the governor himself said: ‘look, Zeina, you’ll come to bring the outside view, to add’.

It’s a house that is tidy, the point is to hold the baton and move forward well. This made my decision easier.

There is no doubt, first of all, trust in the governor. If it weren’t for that, I would have followed my life in the private sector.

Which secretariat policies do you see as correct in recent years and which should continue? I’m still learning and seeing everything that’s being done, because it’s a very wide range. In general guidelines, taking my training and experience, when we think about the role of the State in the economy, it has to act where the private sector arm is shorter. And certainly in a pandemic situation, this need for state action increases.

What I see in the secretariat is that the nature of these programs – which is training, qualification of the workforce, innovation, improvement of the business environment – ​​helps to recognize the talents and the comparative advantages or talents of each region, if we go analyze in the order of economic research, this is where the State has to enter.

Of course, [seria diferente] if we had an environment in which the private sector handles qualification, but that is not the case. We are talking about the qualification of the most needy people, who sometimes will not have access to a course, of people who have been unemployed for a long time, who do not have the financial means.

There are public policies of the secretariat that are associated with income transfer, but conditioned to training. In general terms, the performance of the secretariat is adequate when we think from the point of view of recommending public policy.

My role will be to evaluate each one of them to, in fact, value those with the greatest impact and reformulate, perhaps, those that we conclude are necessary.

This is a job that is not trivial. It involves academic research, research institutes. The state of São Paulo is in a position to do this.

In Brazil we have a difficulty with data, but I think the mission is a bit like this: which public policies have the greatest impact?

Some people catch the eye and say: “this is interesting”. But again, part of my job is going to be identifying those policies, based on science, not hunch.

And the partnerships? One thing that the secretariat already does and we have to move forward and be ambitious is a lot of dialogue with public bodies, with universities, with municipal secretariats, with the agreements they have with municipalities and the S system.

You’re not going to solve people’s problems by simply announcing a policy. It has to be implemented. The more it is connected with the bodies involved, with those who have the expertise, the greater this effectiveness will be.

Now, it’s mapping to see where there are bottlenecks, where they don’t, what you can do to ensure effectiveness.

AND with the private sector? For now, there is a desire for a lot of conversation. A concern of courses that are demanded by the private sector.

How to unite and strengthen, shorten the points with the private sector so that the knowledge generated is actually translated into innovation. In this sense of understanding the demands of the other side and working together.

Which personal characteristic you intend to bring to the secretariat? It’s a set of things. First, my training as an economist. My master’s, my doctorate, which is essential. But also an issue that is not about training, which is the willingness to dialogue.

Dialogue does not mean agreeing. There are times when we will have disagreements.

To think about the effectiveness of public policy and impact on society, I have to think about what the demand of the private sector is. It is useless to offer a qualification course that will use taxpayer resources that will not increase employability or will not help the person to have a better remuneration.

Or when we think about what the country, what the state invests in research for innovation. How much does this actually translate into new patents, into innovation? How to leverage these policies.

Most of the time it involves this dialogue with other instances and with the private sector.

And what is the competitive advantage of the state of São Paulo? It has the natural vocations of the region, obviously. But it has advantages that have been built in.

When we take the history of São Paulo, which, at the beginning of the last century, began to increase spending on education, reformed the system and invested in infrastructure, this is a built-in comparative advantage. Our universities, research institutes are advantages.

In this you enter a virtuous circle. It creates a market, qualified labor, infrastructure.

We are in a country that has been facing very deep economic crises, a very rough economic cycle and this impacts everyone.

Of course, in all states and similar secretariats, we have to improve the business environment, guarantee the inclusion of people, not only as a moral issue, but even for growth. People who are on the fringes of the job market are also on the fringes of the consumer market.

Exercising citizenship –is documented even in the economic literature– goes beyond moral issues of leaving no one behind. Why it’s worth not leaving anyone behind. It creates citizens, helps development in general. This has an impact on crime and social indicators important for growth.

Our role, even more in a difficult context of a country that grows so little, [é ver] what can we do to overcome difficulties and look at failures of state action and seek to improve.

How to develop a region like Cracolândia? There is no way without first dealing with the issue of safety and health. You need to do good planning and have studied the feasibility. It touches on a more assistance issue. My answer is superficial because I have not yet discussed this matter. We can resume at another time.

In a country with high inflation, how can the state encourage entrepreneurship? The various secretariat policies exist because they are very different needs depending on the segment of society.

Generally, the fact of facing difficulties to find an occupation increases the interest in entrepreneurship. We saw this in the pandemic. People who lost their jobs and went off on their own.

The entrepreneurship of these people can be the way out.

When we think about entrepreneurship here and everywhere, the failure rate is high. But it is also up to the State to finance. And, in successful cases, seek ways to share this benefit to society.

The fact of having a difficult economic cycle, a country that grows little, runs the risk of having the case of many entrepreneurs who do not prosper, but that is no justification for us not to support them.

How much can the secretariat advance to the end of this year, before a new term? Of these various policies, some are more expensive for the governor. They are the ones that have important numbers and are connected to the demand of society.

It has all the professional qualification and reinsertion programs in the job market.

For example, Undertake Quick. We are talking about a situation in which default, unfortunately, is appearing again. It’s not just about helping these people, but it’s associated with some kind of training.

In a context where technologies advance, where the demands of the job market are greater, where there are people who have been unemployed for a long time and who will not be able to relocate if they do not have this requalification and they cannot do it in the private sector and thinking about the issue of clean name, those would be the priorities right now.

We have to have a direction, many times something is not achieved in the short term, but there is a long-term objective there. Regardless of political agendas. It’s a short-term look with long-term guidelines.

As a possible new mandate of Jair Bolsonaro in the Presidency of the Republic can impact the state of São Paulo? We had a Bolsonaro government, a PT government, and the state of São Paulo played well. Looking at the numbers, we are talking about a state that grew more than the country’s average, that many policies were made from health to employment.

The state government did not turn its back on society during the pandemic. There is always room for improvement, but it would be unfair not to recognize it, and the numbers are there.

Is it possible to manage the state independently of the federal government? Have to! And when you have a node, you have to have a dialogue. At the federal level, there are also good professionals, there is work being done.

X-ray

Zeina Latif has a PhD in economics from USP. In the private sector, she was an economist for important financial institutions and a consultant. She is the author of the book “We from Brazil: our heritage, our choices”. She was a columnist for Estadão and the newspaper O Globo.