See the profile of Brazilian defaulters by state – 10/12/2023 – Market

Delays in paying for water, electricity and gas top the list of defaults in six Brazilian states. Basic bills exceed credit card outstanding, considered the villain of debt in the country.

In Acre and Amapá, half of those denied have outstanding bills for essential services. Mato Grosso, Roraima, Rondônia and São Paulo join the group.

Overall, the percentage of adults with some default, from late retail payments to cell phone bills, reached 46.5% in September.

The analysis of the Sheet was made based on data from Serasa, a credit bureau that receives information about customer debts from creditors, and population projections from IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).

The institution already points to an increase in debt renegotiation through the federal government’s Desenrola program. However, basic accounts are at high levels and represent 25% of outstanding financial issues in the country.

According to company data, Brazil has 71.4 million defaulters. In eight states, half or more of the population over 18 years of age has some outstanding debt, such as Amapá (65%), the Federal District (58.6%) and Rio de Janeiro (58.3%), for example.

The average value is R$4,672 per debtor. Debts range from R$3,501 in Maranhão to R$7,500 in the Federal District.

A Sheet crossed the number of Serasa defaulters with the population of each state measured in the 2022 Census and used the most recent age projections from IBGE to estimate the share of inhabitants aged 18 or over, as the age details from the official survey have not yet been released. disclosed.

Defaulters are consumers who are already in debt, which differs from those who are in debt — anyone with a portion of their income committed to credit card purchases or some type of financing.

The proportion of adult debtors varies from 26.4%, in the case of Piauí, the state with the lowest share, to 65%, in the case of Amapá.

Amapá, Distrito Federal, Rio de Janeiro, Amazonas and Rondônia record the highest proportions of debtors. On the opposite side, there are Piauí, Santa Catarina, Paraíba, Maranhão and Rio Grande do Sul.

The biggest difference, however, is the type of debt found in each state. In most of them (66%), more or less a third of consumer defaults come from credit cards and bank debts.

The states with the highest debts of this type are Alagoas (37.5% of state debts), Rio Grande do Norte (36.6%) and Paraíba (36.4%). Following the credit, water, gas or electricity bills appear.

However, these basic expenses stand out and represent more than 50% of those denied in Amapá (52%). In this case, the northern state is followed by Acre (46.8%), Roraima (43.2%), Rondônia (42.17%), São Paulo (31.2%) and Mato Grosso (25.8% ).

Experts indicate that the renegotiation promoted by Desenrola could be one of the factors that motivate defaulters to pay off high-interest debts, such as credit cards, and pay less expensive debts later.

Families often have to choose which bills to pay first. As interest rates on essential bills are much lower than those on credit cards or retailers, it is cheaper to postpone payment.

“What will help reduce defaults the most, more than the government program, is the drop in credit card interest rates and inflation, which was severely choking family budgets. Products are not rising at the level they were before , but it still takes some time [para retrair a inadimplência]”, says Fabio Bentes, economist at CNC (National Confederation of Commerce).

Furthermore, in poorer regions, he points out, the volume of debt with basic accounts tends to be greater because there is still a large part of the population unbanked, but who have contracts with companies that provide basic services.

Delays related to financial loan companies are highest in Alagoas (19.6% of debts have this origin), Paraíba (18.9%) and Rio Grande do Norte (21.8%).

The highest volume of retail defaults is recorded in Amazonas (26.7%), Mato Grosso (25.2%), Tocantins (22.05%), Santa Catarina (20.8%) and Maranhão ( 20.6%).

“People’s consumption power increased with the release of credit, but it was not accompanied by guidance on how to use it. The population looks at the card as an additional salary, not as a means of payment”, says Cíntia Senna, master in financial education.

Companies like Serasa and SPC are credit market databases that receive information from creditors (such as banks and retailers) regarding customers’ ability to pay.

It is the creditors themselves who define whether the consumer will have a “negative CPF” or not in these databases. There is no common rule for this definition.

The public in Desenrola’s range 1, low-income consumers, will have their CPFs deactivated from this month onwards. The government’s estimate is that the last stage of the program will remove up to 32.3 million people from the default list.