by Bianca Oliveira
The GDP preview, announced this week by the IBC-Br – Economic Activity Index of the Central Bank (Índice de Atividade Econômica do Banco Central) – , advanced 0.59% in November compared to October, registering the seventh consecutive month of growth. Accumulated in 2020, the index recorded a 4.63% decline in GDP, way below the estimates made at the beginning of the pandemic by international agencies, which predicted a loss of more than 9%.
Among the factors that held a drop so deep is the availability by the federal government of emergency aid, a social protection measure that allocated to almost 68 million Brazilians a value of R$ 600.00 for five months, plus three more installments of R$300.00. During the payment, which ends on January 27th, public spending was approximately R$ 294 billion.
In an interview to Dire News Agency, Juliana Inhasz, economist and professor at Insper, said that the emergency aid created a “mattress” that cushioned the fall in GDP, but points out that some indirect effects of this measure were fundamental to bring more balance.
“The aid helped many people not to fail, to continue consuming and this generated a multiplicative effect. People supposed to be without income did not stay, including many people who had no income so far and started to have. This was able to guarantee an active consumer market, which prevented a great fall ”, explains Juliana.
The sectors that have benefited most from the economic program are: food and beverages, hygiene and personal care, construction and pharmaceutical products.
“These sectors will feel the pressure with the end of the emergency aid. Perhaps even less than others due to the essentiality of this type of consumption, but they will certainly feel it ”, comments the economist.
This consumer bubble created by the emergency aid started to lose strength in the beginning of 2021. For example, according to IBGE – Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) -,