Lula government sends Congress zero deficit target for 2024 – 04/14/2023 – Market

The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) sent Congress a forecast to zero the primary deficit in 2024 and obtain a surplus of BRL 61.6 billion in 2025.

The numbers are in the PLDO (Budget Guidelines Bill) of 2024, sent this Friday (14) to Congress. The document establishes the guidelines and goals for the following year, shaping the Budget proposal to be discussed in the second half.

The PLDO forwarded this year has the particularity of seeking to balance the reality of two fiscal legislations, the current one (which establishes the spending ceiling created in the Michel Temer government) and a new rule that is about to be sent by the government.

If the government’s proposal for a new fiscal rule goes ahead, as expected, the numbers sent by the government in the PLDO should be modified.

The Minister of Planning and Budget, Simone Tebet, said this week that the project would go to Congress with temporary and “very ugly” numbers, as they are based on the spending ceiling.

“The LDO comes with a number that stays there temporarily until the approval of the fiscal framework. We were very careful to put it there, link the LDO to the new parameters of the fiscal framework, if it is approved by the National Congress”, she said on Tuesday (11 ).

“It was this detail that we put in the LDO. We are conditioning the new numbers to a possible approval of the fiscal framework in the National Congress”, he added.