Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Friday that the country will not cut budgets allocated for infrastructure programs despite the current financial crisis.

Lula told a press conference that Brazil will stick to its plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure in the coming years, on projects including hydroelectric dams, highway improvement and railways.

He claimed Brazil is "well prepared" to deal with the ongoing global financial crisis.

"We have a solid economy and consistent fiscal policies. Meanwhile, we have accumulated more than 200 billion U.S. dollars in foreign reserves," he said.

He blamed lax lending practices in major economies for the crisis, saying that it is unreasonable for the U.S. banks to lend as much as 35 times what people could pay.

He recommended that the upper limit of loans should come down to eight, nine times at most, of borrowers' assets.

(Xinhua News Agency October 11, 2008)