Haddad takes over as Finance minister promising new fiscal anchor
In his first speech in office, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad advocated the importance of working with "feasible targets" for public accounts. He ruled out, for example, a primary deficit lower than R$60 billion for this year. As for the new fiscal framework, he said the fiscal anchor will organize "the public accounts in the long run." Mr. Haddad also said, more than once, that he plans to work with the other ministers of the economic area: Vice President Geraldo Alckmin (Development, Industry, and Commerce), Simone Tebet (Planning), and Esther Dweck (Management and Innovation)."We will not lie to the population, saying that the deficit will be R$60 [billion] when the forecast [in the budget] is at more than R$200 [billion]. We won’t do that," he said at the ceremony, held at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB), where the government transition was also made. At the same time, he assured that the federal administration will not accept "a primary result that is no better than" the amount provided for in the budget bill."We will create objective goals. Demanding, but feasible goals to deliver to the country the confidence it needs to return to growth," he said.Mr. Haddad promised to present the new fiscal framework in this first half of the year. Over the years, his constant criticism about the spending cap was precisely the fact that compliance, according to him, is hardly feasible. In his first speech in office in this third term, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called the instrument a "stupidity." In the minister’s view, the new framework must be "reliable," "respected," and "feasible.""If you propose an unattainable goal, you have no goal at all. If you propose a goal that is not ambitious, you don’t motivate the country. It is in this balancing act between ambition and feasibility that we are going to exercise our mandate concerning all the economic targets that everyone in this room is concerned about," he said, referring to the ministry’s secretaries.For the minister, "there is no isolated fiscal or monetary policy," but rather a single "economic policy" that needs to be "harmonized.""We have the highest interest rates in the world in real terms and we do need to seek an understanding between the fiscal authority and the monetary authority," he said.Mr. Haddad promised to be "pragmatic" and not "dogmatic" and said that the public policies he carried out during his time as Education minister were only successful because...
Para continuar a ler
PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃO