“We have to have an eye for the social and the fiscal”, says BC president

The president of the Central Bank of Brazil, Roberto Campos Neto, said this Friday (11) that it is necessary to have an eye for the social, but maintain fiscal balance. The speech was made in a lecture for the CFA Society Brazil, on the world economic scenario.

“If there is no fiscal balance, we return to a world of uncertainty where the expectation of inflation rises, you disorganize the productive sector in the sense of investment, and in the end who suffers most from this is the population you want to help, because you hurts job creation.”, said Campos Neto.

After the lecture, Campos Neto was asked how the Central Bank works with this market reaction to the political scenario, and the changes in the new elected government. According to him, markets worldwide are more “sensitive” to government measures, due to the size of public debts.

“Debts are high, because they had to stay high, in large part, they were programs that needed to be done to serve the population in a pandemic that we had, energy crisis, several things at the same time. This is understandable.”, stated Campos Neto.

However, the president explained that the current market demand is to know how the economic planning will be from now on, to know how they will meet the social needs and at the same time maintain a fiscal balance.

government transition

Roberto Campos Neto also made himself available to participate and help in the transition of the new government. According to the president, he has not yet had much contact with the transition team.

“But the Central Bank is open to contributing to the new government, remembering that we do not do fiscal, fiscal is as if it were an input in our model, it is super important to synchronize what is being done. I think there’s a lot, in this transition period, it’s normal for the noise to increase, and we need to wait and see how this will be consolidated”, he highlighted.

Asked if he saw risk in the Central Bank’s independence model, Campos Neto said that the institution’s autonomy is an important test. However, he highlighted that the measure was approved in Congress, judicialized and defended in the Federal Supreme Court.

“But the BC is technical, it will try to work with the new government, cooperate as much as possible, and our work is to help improve the lives of Brazilians. We are a technical body that is looking at Brazil,” he added.