Brazil, China team up to create $1B investment fund

Bloomberg News | October 3, 2025 | 9:09 am Critical Minerals Energy China Latin America

Chinese President Xi Jinping with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Credit: Palácio do Planalto | Flickr, under licence CC BY-ND 2.0.

Brazil’s Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China agreed to create a $1 billion fund that will invest in sectors such as energy transition, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and artificial intelligence.

BNDES, as the Brazilian bank is known, will provide $400 million and China’s CEXIM will come up with $600 million for the initiative, according to a statement. The new fund, which will start operating in 2026, will invest in debt securities and equity stakes in Brazil.

BNDES and CEXIM have already signed a commitment term and a declaration of intent to cooperate to structure the fund. According to BNDES’s Planning Director, Nelson Barbosa, the initiative is the first bilateral fund between a Brazilian and a Chinese institution, operating primarily through investments denominated in reais.

“This new partnership between the two institutions will strengthen the commercial and economic relationship between Brazil and China,” he said during the ceremony to announce the fund in Rio.

(By Martha Beck)