by João Marcelo
President Jair Bolsonaro said last week that a new round of emergency aid should happen from next month and should extend for another 4 months. Bolsonaro said that this is an alternative currently discussed between the executive and the congress, however the amount of the aid has not been defined and may be between 200 and 250 reais. Despite not being officially confirmed, the president said that the aid is already a certainty. “It’s almost right, we still don’t know the value. Certainly, starting in March, (for) three, four months ”, said the president in a conversation with journalists at the end of a government event in Alcântara, in the state of Maranhão.
According to Minister Paulo Guedes, the goal is to serve half of the 64 million beneficiaries they received in 2020. But neither the president nor the minister revealed what the selection criteria will be. The National Congress and the minister said that some concessions need to be made in order for emergency aid to return. For Paulo Guedes and for the president of the Federal Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (Democrats), the aid can only be returned if the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) of the Federative Pact is approved.
The proposal is to give more financial autonomy to states and municipalities. To do this, the measures included in the PEC seek, in general, to decentralize public resources and to separate revenues from certain expenses, through fiscal adjustments. In an interview with the newspaper Correio Braziliense, the former senior economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and doctor of Economics from the University of Chicago, Alberto Ramos, recognized the importance of the return of emergency aid at a time when the country is dealing with a second wave of the covid-19 pandemic. But it recommends that spending cut measures also be adopted to open fiscal space to the benefit that will serve the
most vulnerable population. “It is a question of efficiency and necessity.