President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT).| Photo: EFE/André Borges.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) defended this Thursday (6) the possibility of changing the Brazilian inflation target to hold interest rates. The inflation target for this year is 3.25%, with a tolerance interval of 1.5 percentage points. The statement was made during a breakfast with journalists at the Planalto Palace.

“I don’t know if it was from any of you [jornalistas], but these days I read a sentence that I don’t know if it was said by the president of the Central Bank that, to reach the 3% target, 20% interest would be needed. I don’t know if that was true, but at the very least it’s unreasonable. because if the goal [de inflação] is wrong, the goal is changed”, said the president, reported the newspaper O Globo.

Lula referred to a comment made by BC President Roberto Campos Neto last week. At the time, Campos Neto said that to meet the current inflation target, interest rates should be at 26.5% per year. The president of the monetary authority stressed that this hypothesis would be impossible. Today, the Selic, the basic interest rate, is at 13.75%, a level criticized by the government.

At the end of the event, Lula was asked about the real possibility of changing the inflation target, but he downplayed his statement and said that he does not intend to discuss the target. “I said I wasn’t going to discuss goals, because this is a problem with the autonomy of the Central Bank and the Senate, which approved the autonomy of the Central Bank”, he pointed out.