Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social named Ricardo Ramos, who currently runs the state-owned bank's capital markets monitoring business, to replace outgoing CEO Paulo Rabello de Castro, Reuters reported.

Rabello de Castro is set to step down from the top job on March 31. He has signaled his intention to run for the office of Brazil's president in elections scheduled for October.

Additionally, BNDES has lowered its forecast for loan disbursements in 2018 to 80 billion Brazilian reais from 90 billion reais previously, the newswire reported separately, citing the outgoing CEO.

The new lending forecast follows a slowdown in disbursements during the first two months of 2018, when the bank's lending fell 32% year over year to 6.85 billion reais.

Rabello de Castro noted that BNDES will return an additional 100 billion reais of debt owed to the Treasury in the coming months. It recently repaid 30 billion reais out of a total 130 billion reais due this year.

As of March 28, US$1 was equivalent to 3.34 Brazilian reais.