‘Question for Paulo Guedes,’ says Mourão about salary increases for civil servants

The vice president of the Republic, General Hamilton Mourão, when asked about the possibility of increasing the number of civil servants, said that the responsibility would fall to the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes.

“Ask Paulo Guedes, he’s the only one who knows,” he declared this Friday (19th).

President Jair Bolsonaro (no party) confirmed this Tuesday (16) that he intends to use part of the fiscal slack generated by the eventual PEC approval (proposal to amend the Constitution) of the Precatório, in granting a salary increase to federal employees.

He made the statements after participating in a business event in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, where he arrived after a three-day visit to Dubai.

The president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), said this Thursday (18th) he did not see space in the text of the PEC dos Precatório already approved by the deputies to grant salary increases to civil servants.

“I absolutely did not see this space, I do not know this space, the numbers that were presented by the Economy to the Chamber of Deputies did not predict this increase”, he said.

The PEC is the main project of interest for the Planalto Palace currently at the Congress. With the proposal, it is possible to increase by nearly R$ 100 billion the margin for spending in 2022, the year in which Bolsonaro intends to run for re-election.

Like sheet showed, the assessment of the president’s allied leaders is that Congress should act against a broad salary adjustment for federal employees, especially if the measure requires an even greater reduction in the amount to be allocated to parliamentary amendments and expenditures in the social area in 2022.

Negotiations in the Senate, however, show that, in order to approve the PEC, the government must change the text and prevent the increase in expenses provided for in the proposal from being used to pay for the readjustment.

In order to try to guarantee the payment of the R$ 400 of Auxílio Brasil in December (which depends on the PEC), the government is considering proposing that the changes being discussed in the Senate be placed in another text — a parallel PEC. Only this second text would go to a vote in the Chamber, while the pillars of the PEC dos Precatório would be promulgated in early December.