“I don’t work with that hypothesis”, says Guedes about losing the elections

At an event with a businessman this Thursday (1st), the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, avoided answering whether he would work to approve the tax reform in Congress, if President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) is not re-elected this year. When asked about the issue, Guedes limited himself to saying: “I don’t work with that hypothesis”.

The Forum: Payroll Exoneration, promoted by the United Brazil Institute (IUB), launched a manifesto in which it called for the presidential candidates to commit to a “broad payroll tax exemption program, as a permanent and sustainable policy, in the certainty of that, in this way, we will avoid a serious social security problem with impacts on our fiscal solvency.”.

Called to give the panel “Funding Proposals for the Exemption of Folha”, Guedes did not speak on the subject. At the end of the lecture, the minister limited himself to saying about the central theme of the event: “Am I going to talk about this at election time?”

The minister also celebrated the GDP result, released this Thursday (1st), by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). “Today we had great news, second quarter GDP at 1.2%. Composite with the result of the first quarter, we grew 2.5% in 2022, and of course we will grow more, but Brazil will certainly grow 2.5% this year,” said Guedes.

Regarding the low growth projections for 2022 and 2023, the minister said that the market has been wrong in the projections because Brazil’s economic investment matrix has changed. For the minister, now the investment is greater by the private sector, and not by the public power. Guedes concluded by stating that two reasons lead to these errors: militancy or disinformation.