New PAC postponed to early August, at Lula’s request – 07/17/2023 – Market

The Minister of the Civil House, Rui Costa, announced this Monday (17th) that the launch of the New PAC (Growth Acceleration Program) will be postponed once again.

Now, at the request of President Lula (PT). According to a note released by the Civil House, the representative “signaled in a call that he intends to wait for the end of the recess in the National Congress for the launch”. The ministry also said that the date of the event will be announced in the coming days.

The ceremony was scheduled for the next 27th, at the Planalto Palace. But Lula wants broad participation from deputies and senators, who will only return to Brasília in August.

Planalto is working to consolidate the government’s support base in Congress, and the president is negotiating a broader entry of the centrão on the Esplanada, with exchanges also scheduled for August.

The reformulation of the PAC is one of the main flags of the Lula government 3, and has been mentioned in most of the public speeches by the Chief Executive.

This is yet another postponement of its announcement, which has been waiting since April, when Rui Costa said it would be launched for the first time. Since then, the schedule has suffered successive postponements. The Civil House argues that the longer period was due to different factors —among them, what they call the “planning deconstruction project” of federal and state structures in recent years.

A Sheet showed in June that the government was working with the expectation of launching in July the so-called New PAC with around 2,000 works, between federal and state undertakings.

The folder had, at the time, 356 projects indicated by the states. The estimate is that the number of federal works, which will be most of the range of undertakings, will be around 1,700.

In an interview with the newspaper O Globo, on Sunday, Costa said that the forecast public budget for the program is R$ 60 billion, not including PPPs (public and private partnerships) and investments by states and municipalities.

Another novelty of the program is that the federal government increased the number of program axes to seven, including one specifically for defense spending.

The reactivation of the Defense industry gained momentum in the crisis with the military, after the January 8 coup acts. It was a way found to guarantee the approximation of the Forces with the Lula government, through the implementation of priority projects of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

In addition to Defense, the New PAC has six other axes, which had already been announced by the government: transport, urban infrastructure, water for all, digital inclusion and connectivity, energy transition and security, and social infrastructure.