The recent announcement by Finance Minister Fernando Haddad has sparked a lot of discussion. At a PT event held in Brasilia, the Minister shared the worrying news that the government will not be able to fully implement the 2023 budget. The lack of staff is one of the main reasons for this situation.
“I shouldn’t say this, but we won’t be able to fulfill the entire budget this year. We are still holding a competition to hire servers,” the minister stated. This statement reinforces a serious problem that many have already noticed: that there are more than R$28 billion locked up in ministries. .
What is the reason for not implementing the 2023 budget?
The “pooling” of resources, as delays in budget implementation are known, is the result of several factors. Among them are bureaucracy, budget stagnation and missed deadlines. According to a report by Valor, currently R$24.163 billion are resources from ministries and other public bodies, based on data collection conducted by the National Treasury at the end of November.
This is not the first time this topic has come up for discussion. In November, President Lula asked his ministers to make efforts to spend more, arguing that idle money brings no benefit to the country.
How does this affect social programs?
Non-implementation of the budget not only harms the country’s development in many areas, but also directly affects a part of the population that is in dire need of it. According to Haddad, there should be fiscal austerity policies to “put the poor on the budget,” an ideal that has been championed since the campaign of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
To fulfill this promise, the Minister indicates the need to radically reduce government support for specific sectors of the economy. He refers to this inefficient spending as “jabuti”, which are appendices that parliamentarians include in bills.
Despite the challenges, Fernando Haddad is optimistic about the future. He believes in a lower interest rate, with the Selec rate expected to reach 11.75% at the next COBOOM meeting. Moreover, the Minister estimates that Brazil should end 2023 with two million new formal jobs generated.
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