Tebet confirms that the 2024 Budget Guidelines Law (PLDO) will be filed this Friday, still under the spending cap: "it will be frightening"

247 - The Minister of Planning and Budget, Simone Tebet, confirmed that the Draft Budget Guidelines Law (PLDO) for 2024 will be filed today, possibly in an extra edition of the Official Gazette of the Union (DOU), still following the spending cap rule. informs The Valor Econômico newspaper.

She stated that the text will "frighten" by showing the reality of Brazil's public accounts under the spending cap. According to what the minister declared to journalists after an event in São Paulo this Friday (14), the country does not have fiscal space for new expenses: "it will show that we have absolutely no fiscal space for anything new, on the contrary, we would need to remove discretionary [non-mandatory] spending, basically we zeroed discretionary spending". 

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"Today, we have something around R$ 200 billion in discretionary spending. If you remove the parliamentary amendments, that leaves R$ 170 billion for the Executive branch to serve all of Brazil, in all areas, in all sectors. With the spending cap, we practically lose all of that resource. A very modest amount remains, which you will see in the Official Gazette," he added.

The draft budget law will still follow the current spending cap rule, due to the fact that the new fiscal framework has not yet been submitted for approval in Congress. "This is important because it effectively shows that the spending cap, having been exceeded so many times and due to the fact that it was not accompanied by a tax reform at the right time, has already collapsed on our own house," Tebet pointed out.

The Valor report also states that the draft budget law will include a clause indicating that, if the new fiscal framework is approved, the parameters, figures, and indicators will be modified.