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Green transition could receive 25% of federal public funds surplus Politics valorinternational.txt
Senator Jacques Wagner says change will allow federal government to promote projects of major environmental relevance — Foto: Jefferson Rudy/Agência Senado The loteria federal 17/3/2018federal government will be authorized to allocate up to 25% of the financial surplus from its public funds to climate finance and initiatives linked to the ecological transition. The provision is included in the proposal to amend the Constitution (PEC) 66, approved by Congress and set to enter into force on Tuesday (9). Experts and budget analysts view the measure as a way to expand the Executive branch’s quasi-fiscal policy by roughly R$25 billion per year. Simply put, quasi-fiscal policy refers to public expenditures that bypass the central government’s budget. The provision was added to the text during its passage through the Chamber of Deputies at the request of the economic team under President Lula, Valor has learned. In technical jargon, it is considered a “Christmas tree” bill because the original proposal dealt with municipal court-ordered payments and social security obligations. Sources say the government intends to redirect these unallocated funds to increase financing from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) for green projects. According to the proposal to amend the Constitution text, from 2025 to 2030 up to 25% of the financial surplus from the federal government’s public funds, calculated at the end of each fiscal year, may be directed toward “reimbursable financing of projects related to combating, mitigating, and adapting to climate change and its effects, as well as ecological transition.” From 2031 onward, the resources will gradually be returned to their respective funds. The Ministry of Finance will issue regulations defining the remaining terms of the financing. In defending the proposal in his report, Senator Jaques Wagner, the government leader in the Senate, said: “This is a change that will allow the federal government to promote projects of major environmental relevance, without compromising the medium-term sustainability of the funds, since all financing will be structured so that, from fiscal year 2031, the amounts are duly returned.” Although the funds are to be reimbursed from 2031, specialists warn that credit will likely be offered at subsidized rates through BNDES—below market interest rates—to ensure uptake. In practice, this implies an implicit cost to the National Treasury, as the surplus funds, while idle, remain in the Treasury Single Account, earning interest tied to the Selic policy interest rate, currently 15% per year. Another concern is that, while the measure has no primary impact, it constitutes a form of financing public policies that would otherwise go through the budget, hence its classification as quasi-fiscal. Additionally, the proposal increases credit availability in the market and affects federal public debt. “This is a tool the government is using to expand public policies through increased borrowing without showing an impact on the primary balance. The primary balance’s function is to control debt. If you use workarounds to incur debt without affecting the primary result, it ceases to be a reliable indicator,” said economist Marcos Mendes, research associate at business school Insper. He added that a more prudent use of unlinked fund resources would be to reduce public debt, as has been done in previous periods. Gabriel Leal de Barros, chief economist at ARX Investimentos, estimates that, including all measures in PEC 66—such as the unlinked funds—fiscal space could increase by around R$50 billion, or 0.4% of GDP, in 2026. “PEC 66 is yet another initiative to keep the economy buoyant via fiscal and quasi-fiscal space, circumventing rules and weakening the institutional framework of the country’s fiscal policy,” he said. “The scale of PEC 66’s stimulus is compounded by other measures, including private payroll-deductible loans, the Propag program (full debt payment for states), income tax exemptions, use of public and private funds, worsening state-owned company deficits, new brackets for the My Home My Life housing program, and initiatives under the Brasil Soberano program, among others,” he added. According to Mr. Barros, the quasi-fiscal stimulus created by the proposal to amend the Constitution (PEC 66) will further entrench the lack of alignment between fiscal and monetary policy. The Ministry of Finance and the National Treasury did not respond to requests for comment. BNDES said it was not involved in drafting the proposal to amend the Constitution. “In any case, BNDES accounted for only 1.4% of credit flow in the economy over the past 12 months, and 71.1% of the credit volume approved by BNDES in the first half of this year was at market rates, with around 70% of directed credit allocated to the Crop Plan, which BNDES executes under the same conditions as other financial institutions operating the program,” the bank said in a statement. This article was translated from Valor Econ?mico using an artificial intelligence tool under the supervision of the Valor International editorial team to ensure accuracy, clarity, and adherence to our editorial standards. Read our Editorial Principles.
