Census: municipalities predict loss of funds and ask for a count – 06/29/2023 – Market

One day after the release of the first data from the 2022 Demographic Census, municipalities began to point out possible revenue losses from the survey and are already pressing for a new count of the Brazilian population in 2025.

This is because the Census is the basis for defining FPM (Municipal Participation Fund) transfers, a source of transfers to city halls.

The distribution of the fund’s resources is made according to the population groups of the municipalities and their respective coefficients. By this logic, cities with a reduction in the number of inhabitants run the risk of experiencing a drop in transfers.

The CNM (National Confederation of Municipalities) estimated this Thursday (29) that 770 municipalities will have losses in coefficients in the FPM based on the results of the Census.

When this happens, affected city halls usually go to court to make objections. The IBGE itself (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), which is responsible for the Census, signaled this week that it expects to be activated by the municipalities.

Also according to the CNM, 249 prefectures should gain a coefficient in the FPM after the 2022 Census. Another 4,523 municipalities remain stable.

The sample evaluated by the confederation covers a total of 5,542 cities, disregarding the 27 capitals and the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha (PE).

On Wednesday (28), after the release of the Census, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) sanctioned a supplementary bill that seeks to mitigate the impact of the fund’s losses.

The measure, supported by the CNM and approved by Congress, creates a ten-year transition for changing the coefficient of municipalities that migrate to a lower range of the fund.

In a note, the entity states that it followed with “attention and concern” the reports of problems during the Census collection, marked by delays in the midst of budget restrictions for the IBGE in the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government.

The entity is also in favor of carrying out a new population count in 2025.

“By understanding the relevance of this X-ray for the country, the Confederation will work together with the National Congress and the Executive so that a new population count is carried out in 2025 in order to collect effective data and correct the distortions resulting from the survey”, says the CNM.

The population count is a more streamlined survey than the Census and is usually carried out in the middle of each decade, between one census and another.

It serves to calibrate the population estimates that the IBGE releases in years when there is no Census, and it also guides FPM transfers.

A population count was scheduled for the past decade, but was canceled in 2015 due to lack of budget in the Dilma Rousseff (PT) government.

The absence of this survey is pointed out by specialists, municipal managers and the IBGE itself as one of the reasons for the difference between the Census data and the population projections made by the institute.

According to the census, the Brazilian population was 203.1 million in 2022. The number was around 10 million below the IBGE estimate for 2021, which indicated a total of 213.3 million inhabitants.

The Census result was also below a survey preview released by the institute in December 2022. This preview calculated a population of 207.8 million in Brazil last year.

The agency arrived at the number based on partial Census data and estimates for areas that had not yet been censused at the time.

Commenting on the results of the 2022 Census, the CNM said that “the data do not faithfully represent the reality of the country”.

“Very accentuated deviations between the estimated and effective population, as shown in this Census, point to errors in estimates with serious consequences for municipal management”, declared the entity.

In an interview with journalists on Monday (26), the interim president of the IBGE, Cimar Azeredo, countered part of the criticism of the census.

He recalled that some of the mayors tend to complain about the population data compiled by the institute, but said that the Census exchanges the “narrative” for “evidence”.

Azeredo also declared that the current FPM model “is not good for the IBGE”. “It creates a lot of animosity between the mayor and the IBGE. Why? The mayor doesn’t want to lose population”, he said.

“Every time you have a release, an estimate or a Census, we have this problem with city halls. They can’t accept that they are losing. This happens especially in municipalities with less than 170,000 inhabitants”, he added.

Azeredo stated that IBGE demographers are “loving over” the data to understand the differences between the estimates and the Census. He also called attention to the lack of counting in the middle of the last decade.

“This difference, it has an association, we did not have the population count in the middle of the decade. It is fundamental that, in 2025, we count the population”, he said.

“We have to do a count so that we don’t come across big differences. I think the pandemic would have been much milder if we had had a population count in the middle of the decade. The pandemic caught Brazil in a data blackout.”