FGTS: government studies releasing up to R$14 billion – 09/08/2023 – Market

The government is studying a possible release of the FGTS (Service Time Guarantee Fund) balance for those who opted for the birthday withdrawal in recent years and, therefore, were prevented from accessing the resources when they were fired. The measure could inject up to R$14 billion into the economy, but it still requires a diagnosis of the feasibility of the proposal and the support of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

The birthday withdrawal was created in 2019, during the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), and allows the worker to redeem part of the FGTS balance annually — in compensation, the worker is prevented from withdrawing the full amount from the account if he is fired (and may access only the amount referring to the 40% termination fine paid by the company).

The Minister of Labor and Employment, Luiz Marinho, states that the draft bill to change the rules has been under analysis by the Civil House for around 30 days and is awaiting approval from Lula so that it can be sent to Congress.

According to the portfolio holder, the text releases the full balance for those who opted for the birthday withdrawal and ended up being fired in recent years. The news was published by the newspaper O Globo and confirmed by Sheet. Furthermore, the proposal is to end the anti-loan lock for anyone who is fired from now on.

“The FGTS has some functions. One of them is to create assistance for workers in the event of the misfortune of unemployment. Today, it is preventing them from doing this”, he tells Sheet.

According to him, the proposal does not contain other initiatives and has already been debated with Lula and other ministers – and the reception to the idea, according to him, was “normal”. “After all, it is the worker’s right. This money is his,” he said.

Marinho states that the intention is not to inject resources into the economy, but rather to correct a distortion of the rules created during the Bolsonaro administration. “That’s not the objective of the bill, to look at how much it will inject into the economy. But simply to correct a distortion, correct an injustice against the worker”, he states.

The release of new withdrawals is not unanimous and tends to generate concern among technicians and authorities due to other FGTS obligations, such as financing housing policy and sanitation. For Marinho, the fund is capable of supporting the measure — but, in the long term, he insists that the ideal is to end the anniversary withdrawal.

“The FGTS can withstand this withdrawal. What we need to look at is the future. If we want to strengthen it as an investment fund and at the same time increase workers’ savings to help them when the misfortune of unemployment occurs, the birthday withdrawal would have to cease” , it says.

The minister has already defended the end of the birthday loot on other occasions. He says that the end of the modality is not under discussion now, but does not rule out a change at the initiative of Congress after the bill is sent to parliamentarians.

“When you free the worker to use time [via saque-aniversário], he ends up having a smaller balance. Distorting the function for which the fund was created. But we are not debating this, it may be that Parliament intends to debate it,” he said.

Caixa has recorded increasing amounts of redemptions via birthday withdrawals annually. There have been R$77 billion in resources transferred to workers in this modality since it was created (also considering the option of loans and current values) and more than 120 thousand redemptions.