New government in Asuncion nominates new director general for Itaipu binational power plant

For many years the Itaipu binational power plant on the Rio Grande along the border of Brazil and Paraguay was the largest in the world (today it is second to Three Gorges in China). Paraguay’s small economy (it remains basically a rural, farming nation) needs only 10% of the energy generated even though it has a right to 50%. The excess has always been sold to Brazil. For many years, energy-hungry Brazil paid a fixed fee of $120 million annually for Paraguay’s excess electricity. One of the achievements of the Fernando Lugo administration was a renegotiation with an understanding president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, that tripled the amount to $360 million annually.

Lugo was impeached on Friday, June 22, and the new president, formerly the vice president, Federico Franco, has appointed a new Paraguayan director general, substituting the Lugo appointee. The new Paraguayan director general is an engineer, Franklin Anki Boccia. His name still has to be approved by the Paraguayan Congress. Since 2008, Boccia has been one of the Paraguayan members of the Itaipu Administrative Council (there are an equal number of Brazilians and Paraguayans on the council and each country has a director general).

The Brazilian director general, Jorge Miguel Samek, declared that he had no comment on the change. “If anybody is going to say anything it should be the Ministry of Foreign Relations,” he said. According to Samek, the tendency is for all the present directors to remain. He added that any changes at the power plant had to approved by both countries.