MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Temer and Meirelles discussing with congress leaders budget deficit and cabinet positions
Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles wanted to wait until September to weigh looser budget goals, but agreed to move up talks under pressure from Congress. Brazil's government delayed the announcement of looser budget targets for 2017 and 2018, previously expected for Monday, as authorities struggled to estimate revenues given strong opposition in Congress to tax hikes.
The government has been in talks since last week to increase its primary budget deficit targets for 2017 and 2018 to 159 billion Reais (US$ 49.8 billion). Brazil currently targets a deficit of 139 billion Reais in 2017 and 129 billion Reais in 2018 before interest rate payments.
Members of Temer's economic team, including Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles, previously wanted to wait until September to weigh looser budget goals, but agreed to move up talks under pressure from a fractious coalition in Congress.
Parties who helped the president stay in office by blocking bribery charges against him earlier this month are now demanding they be rewarded with cabinet positions. Allies in Congress doubt Temer can achieve anything but watered-down measures to mitigate the severe fiscal crisis.
The budget targets are closely watched by investors as a measure of fiscal discipline.
Brazil lost its investment-grade credit rating in 2015 after missing the goals for years. Temer, who replaced impeached President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, repeatedly pledged to set realistic targets and meet them every year to regain credibility with investors.
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Read all commentsFiscal discipline: Fiscal OR any other discipline is Non-Existent!
Aug 15th, 2017 - 07:12 pm 0WAIT for the increase in - % of & Nº of - taxes AFTER election!
#ForaTemer. https://twitter.com/AngelaMilanese/status/897830186313543680
Aug 17th, 2017 - 02:47 am 0@JB
Aug 18th, 2017 - 10:43 am 0RE Your post in http://en.mercopress.com/2017/08/14/pm-may-supports-falklands-self-determination-calls-on-argentina-to-meet-september-joint-communique/comments
I wonder how much of that 'cost of Brazil' is due to bribes? But probably a lot is simply inefficiency. Come to think, that anti-bribery training we had to do was started around the time the company opened an office in Brazil...
Do you think the top 1% in Brazil have a better standard of living than in the US? If so that would explain why they are not eager to change the status quo.
Hmm, you say Brazil's industry used to be competitive but now it suffers from low productivity. Sounds contradictory, or have things just gone downhill that much? And I'm not sure there were many companies exporting back to the US from Mexico before NAFTA. I thought that was a result of the treaty removing tariffs.
I agree small scale farming can't compete with modern agriculture, but even mechanised agriculture has a hard time competing with US subsidies. This is one of the reasons countries have tariffs in the first place. If the market in Brazil is opened to the US, you can expect a lot more of those small farms to become unviable and a lot more farmers to turn up in the cities.
Didn't know they were trying to bring back mandatory union contributions, I haven't seen anything in the press here. Personally I thought that was one of the least objectionable things in the bill, but not surprising it's the one the unions protest the most.
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