After revising the budget forecast, the government announced on Wednesday (22) that it will use money from the reserve to increase the transfer to education. But he did not guarantee that it will be for universities.
Weak economic activity in the first three months of 2019 was hopeless.
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The government had to lower the GDP forecast – the set of wealth produced by the country – for 2019. From 2.2%, the country's growth projection fell to 1.6%, a level closer to what is being expected by the financial market.
Inflation forecast for 2019 has also changed. It rose from 3.8% to 4.1%. Even so, the government claims it will close public accounts on schedule: in the red by R$ 139 billion.
Even with lower growth, which also represents less revenue for the government throughout the year, there was no further cut in the ministries' budget.
After a struggle within the government between the economic and political areas, instead of the cut, as expected, a release of money was announced.
The money will come out of the budget reserve, which exists for when there is, for example, a sharp drop in revenue. The reserve has R$ 5 billion and the government will use R$ 3.8 billion.
The Ministry of the Environment will receive R$ 56 million in return, while the Ministry of Education will receive R$ 1.5 billion. The ministry did not say whether the money will go to basic education or to universities.
The amount released is close to the amount allocated to universities at the end of April. Even so, the MEC will still continue with almost R$ 6 billion in blocked resources.
The special secretary of Finance, Waldery Rodrigues, said that the Union is under strong fiscal stress, but reinforced that the decision not to make new cuts was a government decision, taken by the Execution Board budget.
“We analyzed the numbers and to govern is to take, is to establish priorities. At this moment, we are aware of the extremely high impact that the two ministries have – the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Education – and we recomposed the budgetary limit for them”.
The money announced for education, in practice, will not affect the cuts that had already been announced in the so-called discretionary revenues – both in basic education and in universities.
According to the ministry, in addition to those blockages, it would be necessary to cut another R$ 1.5 billion and with the transfer, this will be avoided. Also according to the Ministry of Education, the portfolio made a deal with the economy so that there would be no further cuts in the sector.
(Source: G1 report by Jornal Nacional)
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