Government wants “validation” from specialists to reduce opposition to the new fiscal anchor

Government wants “validation” from specialists to reduce opposition to the new fiscal anchor

Before sending the project for a new fiscal anchor to Congress, the Ministry of Finance will seek a “social validation” of the proposal by listening to experts from outside the government with different economic views.

The proposal will also pass through the scrutiny of other areas of the Lula government, including non-economic ministries. The idea is to reduce resistance that facilitates the procedure in Congress.

The government’s goal is to send the project to Congress along with the 2024 Budget Guidelines Law (LDO).

The deadline for forwarding the LDO, provided for in Brazilian legislation, is April 15, informed the Secretary of the Treasury, Rogério Ceron.

“The closer we get to a proposal like this, the better the condition of the procedure”, predicted Ceron. This is the guidance given by the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad.

With less divergence, the secretary said he believes that the work in Congress to approve the project will be easier: “I don’t know how complex it will be (the discussion in Parliament). It depends a lot on how the framework will be and how much it will go to Congress already with social validation from different groups.”

In the secretary’s assessment, the closer the government comes to a proposal with this “validation”, the better the condition for processing. “A smaller number of disagreements we will find in Congress,” he said.

2024 LDO

According to Ceron, the government is considering the possibility of making a “transition” mechanism so that the 2024 LDO project already takes into account the new fiscal framework.

The reason is simple: there is a technical problem to be solved, since, when the project is sent, in April, the spending ceiling will still be in force – while the new fiscal framework will precisely revoke this rule, which limits annual growth. of expenses to the variation in inflation.

Ceron gave some details on how the work of formulating the proposal is going on at the Ministry of Finance, conducted by the Treasury and the Secretariat for Economic Policy (SPE).

According to Ceron, the discussions go through validation steps in the team and are then taken to Haddad. “Then, there is a minimum proposal to be discussed with the other areas of government, economic and non-economic ministries, to close a government proposal”, he explained.

‘core’

For Ceron, there is already a lot of “maturity” around the new fiscal framework. “We joke internally that each one has their own proposal. But it has a common ‘core’”, he said.

He said he believes that this minimum consensus is possible to be achieved: long-term fiscal sustainability to ensure that there is not an explosive public debt trajectory level; healthy growth in expenses, not at variance with what it is possible for society to generate revenue.

Source: CNN Brasil