Rapporteur expects PEC from Precatório to define future of Brazil Aid

The MP (provisional measure) that ends Bolsa Família and institutes Auxílio Brasil in its place, in addition to ending a program with more than 18 years of existence and seen as an international success, leaves open several points considered essential, which should be clarified by the opinion of the rapporteur in the Chamber.

The original text of the MP only suggested that Brazil Aid will be a permanent policy.

On Monday night (8), the government edited the decree that regulates and brings the details of the benefits of Auxílio Brasil, which will take effect this month. The values ​​consider a readjustment of less than 20% in relation to Bolsa Família, announced by the government. It was also not clear how it will be possible to raise the average benefit level to R$ 400 by the end of 2022.

The increase announced this week is less than the 20% initially promised, leaving the average value at R$ 224 per family, below the R$ 400 planned by Bolsonaro’s management.

The government also wants to increase the number of families served, from more than 14 million to 17 million, and create nine complementary benefits. But the Planalto still depends on the approval of the PEC dos Precatório to sustain both the benefit of R$ 400 until the end of 2022 and the new number of contemplated.

“On the budgetary issue, where the big cucumber is, we were working with an amount of R$ 60 billion for the new social program — out of the R$ 34.7 billion of Bolsa Família”, says the rapporteur of the project, the deputy Marcelo Aro (PP-MG).

After a declaration by President Jair Bolsonaro (no party) that no one would receive less than R$ 400 with Auxílio Brasil, the conversation between the rapporteur and the government changed.

“So that no family receives less than R$ 400, the average ticket for the program would be increased from R$ 189 to R$ 450 or R$ 500, and the budget would go to R$ 85 billion. The problem is where to get this The government was unable to respond to this and started to come up with the alternatives of putting it off the spending ceiling and making it temporary aid.”

The rapporteur himself even defined the original text of the MP that changes the entire dynamics of social assistance in the country as a letter of good intentions, without details on how it will be put into practice in practice.

“I’m against the temporary benefit. This ends up not being a state program, but a project thinking about the next election. Who has their lives changed with a one-year benefit?”, asks Aro.

Depending on the progress of the PEC dos Precatórios and new discussions between the ministries and the rapporteur, there is a possibility that the opinion will remove part of the decisions from the government’s hands, already setting guarantees in the text beyond 2022. “Everything depends on how the PEC dos Precatórios will proceed”, says the deputy.

The PEC was approved in the first round by the Chamber last week and is now going to the second round of voting. Last time, former Chamber president Rodrigo Maia (no party-RJ) filed a request with the STF (Supreme Federal Court) to suspend the processing of the PEC.

Experts fear that the new program will centralize decisions at the federal level and deprive municipalities of the power to reach lower-income families. According to the deputy, the role of municipalities in implementing the new program should be reinforced in the opinion.

The registration of Bolsa Família is usually done by Cras (Social Assistance Reference Center), considered a gateway to the Suas (Single Social Assistance System).

Families look for these centers in the municipality where they live, take the necessary documents and open a register in which their financial situation will be evaluated. For Auxílio Brasil, the opinion should maintain the conditions for admission and registration of Bolsa Família, which work well, says Aro.

The idea is that those enrolled in Bolsa Família also have automatic conversion to the new program, and any transition clause, for adjustments, has yet to be defined.

Last Friday (5), President Bolsonaro issued another decree modifying the values ​​of the extreme poverty ranges (from R$89 to R$100) and poverty (from R$178 to R$200).

According to the General Secretariat of Palácio do Planalto, the amounts will be considered for payment on November 17 of the social program.

At this point, the opinion should go beyond what the government proposed, modifying the extreme poverty and poverty ranges to R$ 105 and R$ 210, respectively.

Another idea is that the readjustments become compulsory, corrected by inflation measured in the IPCA (Broad Consumer Price Index).

GOVERNMENT DOES ‘POLITICAL AUCTION’, SAYS SPECIALIST

“It’s a very worrying scenario, Auxílio Brasil should be a strengthened Bolsa Família, which would have to start operating in November”, says Jefferson Nascimento, from Oxfam. “It’s already November and the only thing we know is that families should be without Emergency Aid and Bolsa Família, while the government is dismantling the Cadastro Único data structure.”

With the replacement of the program, the main benefits of Bolsa Família cease to exist: the basic, the variable linked to the child, the one linked to the nursing mother, the one linked to the pregnant woman and the one linked to the teenager.

Instead, there would be three main modalities: early childhood, family composition and overcoming extreme poverty (which already exists and will be maintained). In addition, the government proposed extra benefits: sport aid, scientific initiation scholarship, aid to citizen children, rural productive inclusion and urban productive inclusion, and a compensatory transition benefit.

“It’s a political auction, in which what matters is whether the ticket the government will offer the poorest is R$ 400 or R$ 300 and how many people will benefit,” says Marcos Mendes, former special advisor to the former Ministry from the farm.

According to the economist, the government proposal has several weaknesses and inconsistencies. “They are recreating, in part, the Zero Hunger. The productive inclusion program for those who get formal employment already exists, it is the Abono Salarial. The government is thinking of a way out for the Aid, but it needs to present the conditions for the citizen leave and eventually return to the program,” says Mendes.

For Vinícius Botelho, former secretary of Evaluation and Information Management at the Ministries of Social Development and Citizenship, another issue that arises is that the absence of economic growth makes the debate on the emancipation from poverty very difficult.

In recent weeks, analysts and banks have already revised their forecasts for GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for next year, with expectations of decline or stagflation.

Botelho believes that it would make more sense for the proposals made for Auxílio Brasil to be separate programs, presented sequentially, so that there is time to understand the expected results of each measure, the number of people involved and the values ​​of benefits .

The economist recalls that Bolsa Família also emerged from the merger of other programs, but in a more structured way.

“The possibility of the larger benefit ending at the end of 2022 brings uncertainty to the replacement for a program that helped eliminate 3 percentage points of poverty.”

Insper Otto Nagami professor says that the government is seeking to present some measure to voters for next year, especially those with lower incomes, who suffer most from the current problems in the economy, such as unemployment and inflation. He is taking advantage of the fact that the value of the Bolsa Família benefit was already outdated, since the Bolsonaro government itself ignored this problem until then.

“The replacement by Auxílio Brasil is a way of erasing the mark of PT governments, but now with a ‘expiration date’ for a significantly higher value”, he says.

The analysts heard by sheet remind that the country will continue to need cash transfer programs after 2022, and that ensuring the most robust benefit only until the end of next year puts many of the poorest families, once again, on an income roller coaster.

In an interval of less than two years, they felt the impact of the pandemic, experienced an Emergency Aid of R$ 600, had the benefit cut and then reduced, must have the new Bolsa Família upgraded by the end of 2022 and then return to uncertainty .

The big concern is that the government does not have the resources to maintain the promised benefit, adds Botelho, which will require a new budget shift or an increase in the tax burden in the future.

THE BRAZIL AID PROGRAM

Destined to

• Families in extreme poverty (monthly income of up to R$100 per person)

• Families in poverty (monthly income between R$100 and R$200 per person) with pregnant women or people aged up to 21

How will the payments be

• First Infancy Benefit (R$130): intended for families with children up to 3 years old (paid per member in this situation).

• Family Composition Benefit (BRL 65): intended for families with pregnant women or people between 3 and 21 years old (paid by member in this situation)

• Benefit for Overcoming Extreme Poverty: intended for families in extreme poverty (with a minimum value per member)

New benefits provided for by Auxílio Brasil

• Sports School Allowance (R$1,000 in a single installment or 12 installments of R$100): for students, members of the beneficiary families, with emphasis on the Brazilian School Games

• Junior Scientific Initiation Scholarship (R$1,000 in a single installment or 12 installments of R$100): for students in the program who stand out in academic and scientific competitions

• Child Citizen Allowance (BRL 200 for part-time enrollment or BRL 300 for full-time): full or partial payment of tuition fees for private day care centers to be paid directly to institutions, preferably single-parent families with 2-year-old children and provided that the person has a paid job and there are no vacancies in the public or private network that has an agreement to meet the family

• Rural Productive Inclusion Aid (BRL 200): 3-year incentive which, in practice, consists of the government purchasing food produced by family farmers for consumption by other families

• Urban Productive Inclusion Aid (BRL 200): for Brazil Aid beneficiaries who can prove formal employment relationship

other points

• Emancipation Rule: families that have an increase in income that exceeds the limit of the Auxílio Brasil program may continue to receive it for up to 2 years (provided that the per capita income remains below two and a half times the poverty limit)

• Families who have reduced payments received in the creation of Auxílio Brasil will have a Transition Compensation Benefit for a few months

• Payroll-deductible credit: beneficiaries of federal social assistance or income transfer programs may take payroll-deductible credit in installments of up to 30% of the benefit amount

• The Food Acquisition Program, created in 2003 to encourage family farming, is renamed Programa Alimenta Brasil

• Bolsa Família legislation will be repealed in three months

Service conditions

• Prenatal

• Vaccinations from the national calendar

• Monitoring of nutritional status

• Minimum school attendance