Public accounts have a surplus of BRL 78.3 billion in January, the best month since 1997 – 02/27/2023 – Market

The central government accounts started the year with a surplus of R$78.3 billion, informed the National Treasury this Monday (27).

In nominal values, the result is the best for a month of January in the entire historical series, starting in 1997. When data from previous years are corrected for inflation, the month of January 2023 is the second best in the series, behind result of the month in 2022 (R$ 81.2 billion).

The surplus indicates that the government collected more than it spent last month. The result includes the National Treasury, Social Security and Central Bank accounts.

“The result observed in January 2023 is the best result ever observed in the entire historical series, corrected by the IPCA, for the first year of a new term”, says the body.

According to the Treasury, the significant increases in revenue managed by the Federal Revenue and also in non-tax collection, such as dividends, contributed to the positive number in the first month of the year. The government’s net revenue had a real increase (inflation already discounted) of 2.4% compared to January 2022.

On Thursday (23), the Tax Authorities had already announced that collections totaled R$ 251.7 billion in January, a historic record in the series that started in 1995.

On the other hand, expenses had a real growth of 6.0%. The explanation, according to the Treasury, is the increase of R$ 3.8 billion in expenses with social security benefits and R$ 5.7 billion with Auxílio Brasil (which will once again be called Bolsa Família), compared to January. from 2022.

The primary result is obtained by the difference between government revenues and expenditures.

This year, the LDO (Budget Guidelines Law) authorizes a deficit of up to R$ 65.9 billion. However, at the end of 2022, Congress approved a constitutional amendment that authorized the increase in expenses by BRL 168.2 billion without this impacting the fiscal target.

The deficit actually foreseen in this year’s Budget is R$ 228.1 billion. The team led by the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad (PT), is trying to reduce the gap with a package of measures, mainly focused on recovering revenues.

Last year, the central government accounts had a surplus of BRL 54.1 billion, the first since 2013, reversing a trajectory of eight consecutive years of negative balances.