Video: FHC went to Silvio Santos to present URV in 1994 – 03/01/2024 – Market

30 years ago, the then Minister of Finance, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, went to the auditorium of the Sílvio Santos Program on SBT to present, with common examples ranging from the price of a lipstick to the daily value of a cleaning lady, an ambitious economic stabilization plan that would end hyperinflation in the country.

The episode was recalled on the FHC Foundation’s social networks to mark three decades since the entry into force of the URV (Real Unit of Value), a reference index for the real value of prices discounting the high inflation of the Cruzeiro Real, on March 1 1994.

Amid a communications offensive to explain to the population what the URV was, which would serve as a transition to the implementation of the real in July of that year, then government minister Itamar Franco went to the popular SBT program.

During the minister’s presentation to the public, Silvio Santos introduces the topic by pronouncing the acronym URV as one word, “urvi”, which is corrected by FHC.

“My employees ask if they are going to lose anything with ‘urvi’. What do you think, minister? Are they going to lose?”, asks the presenter.

“Look, first of all, the name ‘urvi’ is very ugly, right? I like to say URV”, responds the minister, who would be elected president of the Republic at the end of that year.

“Today, as you know, with inflation, we think we earn a lot of money, but when we go to buy it, the amount disappears, because inflation eats away at our salaries. It’s ice cream on hot asphalt, our salaries disappear. So this URV is a way for you not to lose, because I will define the fixed salary in URV”, he stated.

FHC then explains that the salary would be linked to inflation and that the population would see the price corresponding to the URV, stable in relation to the dollar, to have a price reference without the increase in inflation.

“A domestic worker, for example, arrives at my house, I tell her: ‘Look, so-and-so, you’re going to earn 100 cruises’. As today is the first day, she knows she’s earning 100. But when I go pay her on the 30th, I’m going to pull out a 100 bill and give it to her. It turns out that 100 bill, with inflation of 40% [ao mês] that we are having, she receives the 100, but it’s not worth 100, it’s worth 60. Now, with the real unit of value, I’m going to go close to the maid and say: ‘Look, you’re going to earn 100 cruises’. It turns out that, if inflation is 40%, at the end of the month, she won’t just receive 100. She will receive 140”, explains Silvio Santos.

Silvio also uses the example of shoe manufacturers to explain what oligopolies are and say that the government would monitor abusive price increases.

“The shoe is not an oligopoly”, says FHC. “But let’s assume it was,” he continues, before saying that manufacturers could not come together to jointly set a price above inflation.

Another item that the presenter chooses to exemplify the theme is lipstick, “because the majority of my audience wears lipstick”, he says, addressing the mostly female audience.

“According to our programming, certainly, in the worst case scenario, in the second half of the year, inflation fell, it ends”, says FHC, defending the plan. “Why don’t you do it now? Because the population has to participate, they have to understand, they have to get used to calculating [os preços] in a fixed, stable way, in the URV.”

Silvio ends the program by appealing to the population to take the URV as a reference to help stabilize prices.

“What the minister wants, what we Brazilians, who care for our homeland, want, is for you to do us a favor. See how much things cost, but look at cruises and immediately transform them into URV. That’s the first lesson from the booklet. See how much you are paying for anything, for a tie, for a kilo of beans, for an outfit, for a skirt, for a haircut. See how much you are paying on cruises and immediately transform it into URV. If If you do this, we have already gone from the first to the second year”, he concludes.