Government makes official exchange at Ipea and appoints Guedes assistant to head institute

The Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government made official this Wednesday (9) the change in command of Ipea (Institute of Applied Economic Research). Erik Figueiredo was appointed the new president of the institute, in an order signed by Minister Ciro Nogueira (Casa Civil).

Figueiredo held the position of Undersecretary for Fiscal Policy at the Ministry of Economy.

The current president of IPEA, Carlos Von Doellinger, was exonerated. He had headed the agency since the beginning of the administration.

The replacement at the institute was thought of in the Economy with the aim of achieving greater integration between the agency’s performance and the economic agenda of the Bolsonaro government.

Ipea supports the government in the formulation of public policies through studies and research in several areas, such as macroeconomics, social policies, infrastructure and regional policies.

Within the economic team, there is an assessment that the agency can be more active in relevant agendas for the government, with studies on fiscal measures and competitiveness.

In addition, there was some discomfort among members of the portfolio with the fact that Doellinger had frequently dispatched from the institute’s building in Rio de Janeiro. The comment behind the scenes is that Ipea’s command needs to be at the agency’s headquarters in Brasília.

With the change, the economic team hopes to achieve greater integration between Ipea and the Special Secretariat for Economic Studies, S3E, a division that Minister Paulo Guedes (Economy) intends to create and leave under the command of Adolfo Sachsida.

Sachsida is now head of the Advisory Board for Strategic Economic Affairs, but he served for three years as secretary of Economic Policy in the ministry – where he had Figueiredo as one of his undersecretaries.

Since 2020, Guedes intends to migrate Ipea to a kind of laboratory of ideas (think tank) within the ministry.

An attempt to make better use of the agency’s studies was made in the discussion of the administrative reform, sent to the National Congress as a government bet to rationalize personnel expenses.

At the time, Ipea prepared the calculations of the potential savings with the approval of the proposal. The reform, however, did not advance in the face of resistance from parliamentarians and criticism that its content could result in the weakening of the public service.

Currently, the secretary of economic policy has been one of the main disseminators of studies on the subject within the government.

Recently, the agency reacted to criticism directed at the conduct of the government’s fiscal policy and issued a technical note stating that the approval of reforms contributed to improving the scenario to a greater degree than projected at the end of 2018 by the economic team of former president Michel Temer. (MDB).

The secretariat also released a study predicting the expansion of private investments from the concessions made by the current administration.

In December 2021, when Guedes’ intention to create S3E became public, Afipea, the association that represents the institute’s employees, released a note criticizing the proposal. In the entity’s view, the change could represent an “institutional downgrading” of Ipea.

The association also warned of a potential desire to “reduce, frame and control the thematic agendas and the scope of action of these organizations to the economic dimension and, we would say, even economistic, of national development”.

“In other words, for this government, development and economic growth are — or should be — synonymous, so that the social, cultural, environmental, regional, political, institutional, international, etc. dimensions of national development would tend to be either minimized or simply erased from Ipea’s work plans”, says the note.

The president of Afipea, José Celso Cardoso Junior, stated that the new president chosen by the Economy is unknown to the researchers.

Figueiredo has an undergraduate and master’s degree in Economics from UFPB (Federal University of Paraíba) and a doctorate from UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul). He did postdoctoral work at the University of Tennessee in the United States. He was a university professor and since 2020 he has been at the secretary of economic policy.

According to interlocutors, Doellinger is expected to remain at the institute as special advisor to the new president.

In March 2021, Doellinger became involved in a controversy when he issued an internal communiqué warning researchers at the body of the risk of punishment in case of publication of studies without authorization.

At the time, civil servants at the agency said they were surprised by the tone of the message, reported episodes of coercion to researchers critical of the government and said they feared that politically biased orientations from the Planalto Palace could compromise disclosures.

The letter signed by Doellinger was addressed to directors and technicians and stated that studies and research are the body’s patrimonial right, which is responsible for defining the moment and form of dissemination. Afipea filed a lawsuit with the STF (Supreme Federal Court) asking for the lifting of restrictions.