The governor of Rio de Janeiro, Claudio Castro (PL), asked President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to review some terms and goals of the fiscal recovery regime agreed for the state, such as payment deadlines and installments.
Castro was received this Tuesday morning (10) by President Lula, at the Planalto Palace, in a meeting that was not initially included in the president’s agenda. Lula asked the governor to send a proposal to the chief minister of the Civil House, Rui Costa.
Castro came to Brasília to participate in Lula’s meeting on Monday (9) with all the governors and heads of powers, organized in reaction to the coup act promoted by extremist militants, supporters of Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
The Rio de Janeiro governor said that he stayed one more day in Brasília, at the suggestion of Minister Alexandre Padilha (Institutional Relations), who organized the meeting.
Castro said that he discussed with the president some priority projects for Rio, including the possibility of revising the bases of the fiscal recovery regime.
The fiscal recovery regime was created in 2017 to provide instruments for adjusting public accounts to states with serious financial imbalance.
The regime offers relief in paying the states’ debt to the Union and other creditors. On the other hand, the federation units have to adhere to fiscal adjustment measures. Rio joined the regime in June last year
According to the governor, the revision is necessary because the state lost about R$ 10 billion per year with the validity of the law that limited ICMS on fuel, sanctioned last year by Jair Bolsonaro.
The governor said that contact with the Civil House would be the first step towards the eventual opening of negotiations, which would later be made with the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad.
“Actually, I am a debtor, so you have to see what the creditor agrees to change, especially since the change in bases comes from a federal law [que limitou a alíquota do ICMS], does not arise from a change in status or default. The federal law took BRL 10 billion from our budget per year, it was BRL 4 billion last year and will be more than BRL 10 billion. So the creditor himself will have to see how we change payment terms, perhaps a change in installments. There will have to be a very technical study,” he added.
After the meeting between Lula and Castro, minister Alexandre Padilha said that this type of negotiations is still very incipient.
“This discussion doesn’t even exist yet. We are going to build a joint agenda with governors and mayors. We are preparing the first meeting for the 27th, it will be a very positive meeting to re-establish the country’s federative relations. And always the effort of combining social responsibility and fiscal responsibility, that is what can guarantee the resumption of growth in a sustainable way in the country”, he said.
On the way out of the meeting with Lula, Castro was asked if there was any inconvenience because he was an ally of Jair Bolsonaro and the Bolsonarist militants had promoted the coup act. The governor then downplayed the former president’s relationship with his supporters, stating that it is something “very vague”.
“Guys, supporters is a very, very vague question. The guy had 58 million votes. Talking about a supporter is something very vague. I have 5 million votes in Rio. there’s a way, imagine governor and imagine president. It’s an election with many votes and you don’t even know 0.0 something about who supports you. There was no embarrassment at all “, he concluded.
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