Currently at 9.3%, the unemployment rate may drop to 8% before the end of the year with the economic recovery, said today (9) the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes. He participated, this evening, in the opening of the congress of the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants (Abrasel), in Brasília
“Before the year is out we are descending [a taxa de desemprego] to 8%. We will end the year with the lowest unemployment we have seen in the last 10, 15 years”, declared the minister.
In Guedes’ assessment, Brazil is entering a long investment cycle. According to him, the Brazilian economy is in a better situation than that of developed countries, which are entering recession, and than that of other Latin American countries, which are “falling apart”, in the minister’s words.
According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the unemployment rate reached, in the quarter ended in June, the lowest level for the period in seven years. Guedes attributed part of the recovery of the job market to the improvement of the business environment, with the reduction of bureaucracy. “Brazil is in a long growth cycle. We created a business environment that already has contracts worth R$890 billion. It is 10 times what a minister invests,” he pointed out.
debt renegotiation
Without giving details, Guedes said that the economic team intends to expand the tax transaction programs (renegotiation of debts with the government). According to him, commerce, services and the events sector must have the same possibilities to settle debts that other segments affected by the covid-19 pandemic have had in recent years. Guedes said that the tax transaction model has already been designed by the Ministry of Economy.
The minister repeated recent statements that, unlike other countries, Brazil went through the pandemic without the public debt exploding. “Brazil is on its feet. It went through two great wars,” he declared.
In 2019, general government gross debt was at 74.3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With the extra expenses related to the pandemic, it reached 88.8% in 2020. With the recovery of the economy and the increase in collection, it has fallen and is currently at 78.2% of GDP.
commercial opening
Noting that Brazil’s plan for joining the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has been approved, Guedes said that European companies began to express interest in investing in Brazil after the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine. “Today, there is this perception, and with the war in Ukraine, the penny dropped for them,” he commented.
Guedes said he had spoken with a French minister (without mentioning his name) to ask that Europe open the market to Brazilian products. “Our trade with you [a Europa] was $2 billion at the beginning of the century. With China, it was US$ 2 billion as well. Today, we trade with you US$ 7 billion. And we trade with China $120 billion,” Guedes reported, in his own words, to the representative of the French government.
“You are becoming irrelevant to us. You guys better treat us nice because if not we’re going to call ‘fuck you’ and we’re going to go the other way because you’re getting irrelevant,” she added.
