Lula’s talk about fiscal target is “boring” and embarrasses Haddad, says LDO rapporteur

The rapporteur of the Budgetary Guidelines Law (LDO), deputy Danilo Forte (União-CE), stated this Friday (27) that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s (PT) speech about the fiscal target is “absurd” for economic policy and causes embarrassment to the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad. This morning, the PT member said that the market is “greedy” and that it will be difficult to meet the target of zero fiscal deficit established by Haddad for 2024.

“President Lula’s statements about abandoning the fiscal target cause embarrassment to Minister Fernando Haddad, who has fought hard to achieve zero deficit after the approval of the economic agenda. Since April, I have been defending the need to change the fiscal target, within a political framework, with dialogue and transparency. I have always defended a lean, feasible and realistic budget, which provides predictability to budget execution. This also involves voting on vetoes on the fiscal framework, which need to be assessed quickly,” said Forte.

During a breakfast with journalists, Lula said that the government will do everything “to meet the fiscal target”, but highlighted that the target “does not need to be zero”. “We will hardly reach target zero because we do not want to cut investments and works. I’m not going to start the year by cutting billions in the works that are a priority in this country. I think that, often, the market is too greedy and keeps demanding the target that they believe will be met”, stated the president.

For the LDO rapporteur, Lula’s speech is “disruptive” for the economic agenda, which still suffers resistance in the Legislature. “This is an offensive statement for the economic agenda, which is being resisted by the Legislature. Especially because the delay in voting on the LDO occurred to give the federal government the opportunity to convince the economic team’s proposals,” he added.

“I will, as always, be at the Executive’s disposal to re-discuss the real economic numbers within the perspective of a possible change in the primary result target”, added the deputy. Earlier, the Secretary of the National Treasury, Rogério Ceron, mentioned that the scenario could be challenging for the 2024 fiscal result, but ruled out changing the deficit target.

“There has been a worsening of the external scenario in recent weeks. The indicators point to an economic slowdown in Brazil, and we are monitoring the impacts, but we will continue to seek the best possible fiscal result in 2024,” said Ceron, informed the Estadão. “We will continue to seek zero deficit in 2024, but we may have extraordinary factors. The more macro analysis of 2024 is ongoing, but nothing changes in the quest for zero deficit,” she added.