2015 primary surplus target set at $24.6 bn
President Dilma Rousseff has passed the 2015 Budget Directive (LDO in the Portuguese acronym), designed to govern budget planning for 2015 and set targets and priorities for the economics panel, including primary surplus targets.
According to the provisions, the primary surplus target – ie. government savings to pay debt interest – is $20.5 billion, or 1% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The combined primary surplus target for the public sector (Federal, State, and Local governments), excluding the financial sector, is $24.6 billion, exclusive of $10.6 billion worth of outstanding liabilities of the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), a strategic investment program combining management initiatives and infrastructure projects. Introduced in 2007, PAC is designed to improve the country's infrastructure in order to make it more competitive internationally by providing resources to new construction projects and improvements in existing ports, airports, highways, waterways, railways, and sewerage.
The president vetoed 32 line-items including a provision expanding the government's priority list beyond the PAC and Brazil without Poverty programs, arguing that the addition “would disrupt the government's efforts to improve implementation, monitoring and control of its existing priorities.”
Introduced in 2011, Brazil without Poverty is a program to overcome extreme poverty by focusing on three main areas: income security for immediate relief of extreme poverty; access to public services to improve education, health, and basic services; and productive inclusion to increase the job creation capacity and job and income opportunities among poorer rural and urban families.
Translated by Mayra Borges
Fonte: 2015 primary surplus target set at $24.6 bn
