Government cuts personnel expenses, Meta processes ‘click farms’ and what matters in the market

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Government cuts staff costs

The Ministry of Economy plans to end the term of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) with personnel expenses in the order of 3.4% of GDP.

This would be the lowest level since at least 1997, when the National Treasury Secretariat’s historical series began.

in numbers: the expense came to be 4.2% of GDP in 2017 and 2020. The reflection of the drop can be seen in the number of active employees: it ended June in 570 thousand, the lowest level in the last 13 years.

• It’s a fall of 10% in the Bolsonaro administration, who started the government with approximately 630 thousand active servers.

What explains: the government reduced the replacement of retired servers from the digitization of services, such as through the Gov.br platform, says the Ministry of Economy.

• The cut in Executive functions and bonuses and the lack of readjustments for civil servants in recent years also contributed to the retraction in spending.

• At the beginning of the pandemic, the government prevented increases in the civil service (at all levels) until the end of 2021, in exchange for R$ 125 billion to states and municipalities. At the federal level, there was no readjustment even after the end of that period.

Reviews: Rudinei Marques, president of Fonacate (Permanent National Forum for Typical State Careers), says that the increase in 40% of the population since 1990 and the fall of 12% in the number of civil servants in the period result in a detriment to the provision of services to citizens.

• Mauro Silva, president of Unafisco (National Association of Tax Auditors of the Federal Revenue) says that the lack of replacement of personnel can generate serious problems, such as in the inspection of smuggling at the borders.

More about civil servants:

• Executives at Petrobras and some of its subsidiaries receive the highest salaries among federal public companies, according to data from the Ministry of Economy; see the ranking of the biggest salaries.

Meta tightens siege against ‘click farms’

Meta, owner of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, sued for the first time Brazilian companies that sell engagement to users on social networks.

Understand: these services hire people to spend their days following, commenting and liking profiles of strangers for thousandths of a real. They are the workforce of click farms, according to a recent report by Sheet.

• Interested customers acquire packages of followers and likes, artificially boosting the profile.

• The companies prosecuted are MGM Marketing Digital Ltd and Igoo Networks, which operate with services such as “InstaBrasil”, “InstaCurtidas”, “SMM Revenda”, “Seguidoresgram” and “Seguidores Brasil”.

Instagram’s intention is to get the owners of these businesses permanently banned from their platforms.

In addition to the two lawsuits, the group also sent out-of-court notices to 40 other companies that offered similar services for Instagram and Facebook.

Interest curve and fixed income

Keeping an eye on the yield curve can be decisive for investors to achieve a more attractive return on fixed income. It is from it that he is able to define the best strategy for these assets.

Understand: the yield curve follows the path of future interest rates, negotiated daily by the market and referenced to the DI rate, which in turn usually follows the Selic rate.

• Following the curves, which can be short, medium or long –depending on the maturity date– can help you decide whether it is worth investing in a fixed- or floating-rate security, for example.

In numbers: from early April to the second half of July, the average DIs curves (from 2025 to 2030) rose from around 11% to approximately 13.5% per year. But in the last three weeks they have converged to values ​​between 11.7% and 12%.

• Considering a drop in accumulated inflation until the end of next year, fixed-rate investments (with pre-determined profitability) become attractive for the short term.

• For the medium term onwards (maturity from 2026), bearing in mind that inflation may surprise, analysts also recommend having securities in the portfolio that pay a return plus the accumulated IPCA (such as the Treasury IPCA +).

More about financial markets:

• It’s ugly to say, but the market wanted more unemployment in the US, writes Marcos de Vasconcellos. He understands in the column the relationship between the job market, inflation and stock performance.

Startup of the Week: Klavi

The “Startup of the Week” board brings on Mondays the x-ray of a startup that recently received funding.

The startup: Founded in 2020, fintech provides customer financial data integration services for companies and is part of the open finance ecosystem.

• Open finance is considered the stage of evolution of open banking, a framework developed by the BC that allows institutions access to the financial history of consumers –with prior authorization– with the promise of increasing competitiveness and the offer of services.

In numbers: the startup announced last week a contribution of $15 millions (R$76 million) in a series A round (understand the stages of investment in startups here). The jackpot adds to the $1.2 million seed funding raised last year.

Investors: the contribution was led by Iporanga Ventures and Parallax, and also had participation from Vivo Ventures, GSR Ventures and CIP SA.

What problem does it solve: Klavi integrates customers’ financial data and also adopts data intelligence in its platform to help companies get to know the consumer’s financial profile in greater detail.

Why it’s featured: in addition to having registered the highest funding in Brazil in the last week, the investment shows the market’s interest in open finance, a model that the BC itself sees as a potential to generate new business.

• Although 5 million customers have already authorized access to their data, the project implementation is stuck in APIs (communication interfaces), which standardize communication between platforms from different institutions.

The week at a glance

There were nine fundraising rounds in Latin America, with $93 million (R$474 million) in investments.

Data is provided by the Sling Hub platform.