(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro promised new data on deforestation rates Wednesday, days after telling foreign journalists that numbers showing sharply increase rates of deforestation were “lies.”
“I hope today to give you the real data,” Bolsonaro said at an event in the city of Anapolis, according to local media reports. At an event in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, the president had promised a “surprise” relating to the numbers produced by Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research, INPE.
Bolsonaro has repeatedly rejected INPE’s latest data, which showed an 88% rise in deforestation between June 2018 and June 2019 and suggested that the organization’s director, Ricardo Galvao, was in the pay of an NGO. Galvao denied the accusation and said he would not resign. The president added that in future he would not be “caught with his pants down” over such important information. His government has announced plans to develop the Amazon region and open up indigenous territories to mining interests.
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