Towards the end of the year, the government should discuss norms for the growth of mandatory expenses and budgetary constraints (expenses that are linked to a base level or also to revenue growth). This is what the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, is going to propose to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The minister says that he still cannot say precisely what will be the subject of "more stable rules", but readjustments in the minimum wage, wages of civil servants, base levels, and links to health and education, for example, must be discussed. The idea is to put an end to the "back and forth" of bindings and readjustment rules to each "conservative" or "progressive" government.
Haddad also adds that the big revision of exemptions should take place after the approval of the tax reform, which he imagines will be approved in Congress in June and July and in the Senate in September or October.
Haddad says that next week he will publish the new rules to facilitate public-private partnerships. The minister also says that regional PPPS ( public-private partnership) companies will also be able to issue incentive debentures (they will be able to raise financing in the capital market with tax exemption, as already occurs in the federal case).
Haddad also criticizes the "jabutis" ( smugglings)and the patrimonialist lobbies (of companies) that take revenue from the federal government, "legal-legislative" exoticisms, talks about the role of the BNDES, rebuts criticisms of the new fiscal rule and also talked about PT (workers' party) and "orthodox" economists.
Translated by Cassy Dias