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The Brazilian economy continues to be the cave of Ali Baba
transformed into a motel,
where speculators arrive in the
afternoon, spend the night and check out in the morning after
raping
the national treasury a little further. They invest $100
thousand one day and get away with $180 thousand the next.
by:
Carlos Chagas
The administration's goal, according to what we hear from Banco Central, is to reach the end of the year with an
interest rate of about 17 percent. This is great news, considering the 24 percent we have experienced in the past. It is also
regrettable news, however, if we compare this rate with the world average, which includes not only developing countries but also
the underdeveloped. In terms of interest rates today, Brazil loses only to Turkey.
The economic team in Brasília keeps touting the benefits of slow, gradual but safe reductions, which is fine. There is
a problem, however: if the reduction pace remains as it is, the only hope for crossing the threshold of the rest of the world,
i.e., no more than 1.5 percent, will be to wait for the end of the Lula administration. We are talking about one presidential
term, of course.
The Brazilian economy continues to give the impression of being the cave of Ali Baba transformed into a motel,
where speculators arrive in the afternoon, spend the night and check out in the morning after raping the national treasury a
little further. Having invested $100 thousand on a given day, they can get away with $180 thousand on the next.
Even worse is the announcement by the government
of a primary surplus of 20 billion for the current year, attributed
to budget cuts and reductions in indispensable items such as health, education and infra-structure projects. It is worse
because these 20 billion will actually be used to remunerate speculators and pay interest on our foreign debt which, by the way,
continues to multiply.
From a figure of 70 billion in the beginning of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration, the previous
President, in 1994, Brazil's debt was calculated at 700 billion at the start of the Lula administration on January, and it keeps
growing. How about some change?
Understanding the message
In the last few days, all speculation ceased within PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro—Party of
the Brazilian Democratic Movement) and so did expectations about the party's inclusion in the upcoming cabinet
appointments. Nothing has actually changed, of course. Still standing is the promise made by President Luiz Inácio da Silva to appoint
members of PMDB in direct proportion to the support given to government projects by the party's congressional blocs.
The reason for the silence actually resides in a recent statement by Lula that we need first to have the welfare and tax
reforms finally approved by Congress before we can move along to anything else. Until the constitutional amendments are
promulgated and the respective laws ratified, there will be no deal. It's not a question of the President not trusting the PMDB;
quite the contrary. The recent rounds of voting in both House and Senate have demonstrated the fidelity of the party's blocs to
the commitment made in September. Nonetheless...
Nonetheless, the President of the Republic behaves like one of his very first predecessors, Marshall Floriano
Peixoto, the one that confiava desconfiando
(trusted while mistrusting). Yes, he will be appointing cabinet members from within
PMDB ranks—at least two of them—and he probably already knows the exact positions to be filled. However, the man is not
talking until all reforms have passed in the Congress.
The peemedebista chiefs, meanwhile, suffer in silence. Some are unable to sleep, others can hardly eat. A few have
decided to resort to prayer, others to cursing. And that's the way it is. Have a weak stomach? Don't venture into politics.
Unification in scarcity
No one can criticize the government's initiative to unify all social programs into one. In addition to the great deal of
confusion regarding the many different benefits, there are actually people getting too much and others getting too little. It's going
to take a long time to achieve a unified system, but the Brazilian people see the effort as worthwhile and like the idea of
creating one single special secretariat to replace all conflicting ministries or at least reduce their number in the future.
What has been really hard to understand, however, are the efforts undertaken by President Lula to secure a R$ 700
million (US$ 250 million) loan from the Inter-American Development Bank in order to spearhead the unification project. Yes,
the idea is to subsidize the interest and schedule payments far away into the future, but we are still talking about a loan,
which will need to be paid back—adding to the ones we already have with foreign creditors.
Well, the administration has announced that the primary surplus will inch toward the 20 billion mark. Why is it,
then, that the economic team has not thought about deducting these 700 million from the huge amount of funds it has been
saving at the expense of prioritary social investments such as health and education? We could at least avoid increases in the
foreign debt, since the bulk of the primary surplus is used to pay the interest, as no one would deny. Such is the state of affairs
in a neo-liberal economy...
This article appeared originally in Tribuna da
Imprensa - http://www.tribuna.inf.br
Carlos Chagas writes for the Rio's daily Tribuna da
Imprensa and is a representative of the Brazilian
Press Association, in Brasília. He welcomes your comments at
carloschagas@hotmail.com Translated by Tereza Braga. Braga is a freelance Portuguese translator and interpreter based in Dallas. She is an
accredited member of the American Translators Association. Contact:
terezab@sbcglobal.net
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