The new government of president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), who takes office on January 1, will have 37 ministries. Information about the structure was announced this Saturday (17) by Governor Rui Costa, from Bahia, who will be the chief minister of the Civil House in the PT government. He participated, in Brasília, in a meeting with the national president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmann, and with Aloizio Mercadante, who coordinated the work groups of the transition team. 
“We defined the ministries that were dismembered. First, I want to reaffirm here a request from the president, which was, when dismembering the ministries, there would be no expansion of positions, that is, the cost and volume of expenses would remain independent of the amount of ministries. So, we are finalizing the structure with 37 ministries, including the ministries that seek to guarantee the transversality of government actions”, he revealed.
Among the portfolios to be recreated and the new structures are the Ministries of Women, Racial Equality and Native Peoples. The current Ministry of Economy will be divided into ministries of Finance, Industry and Commerce, Planning, in addition to a Management portfolio. This last ministry, one of the novelties announced, will be “to improve the quality of public management, rationality, seek to reduce the cost of the public machine, seek to improve the use of technology in the provision of public services to the population”, explained Costa.
The current Ministry of Infrastructure will be split into two portfolios, one for Transport, to take care of highways, and another for ports and airports. The Ministries of Fisheries, Cities, Culture and Sports, among others, will also be recreated.
According to Rui Costa, there will be no increase in the public machine with the expansion of ministries, only a redistribution of positions. Only the positions of the new ministers will be created, through a Provisional Measure (MP). “There will be no creation of positions, as I said, the positions of the current ministries will be redistributed, but the figure of the minister needs to be created by law”, he pointed out.
Regarding the possibility of the president-elect moving to Granja do Torto, one of the official residences of the Presidency of the Republic in Brasília, Rui Costa said that the place will be inspected this week to verify the conditions. “The president will only move to this and other spaces after all the pending items have been surveyed and all measures taken for any necessary repairs to the properties”. For the time being, Lula is staying at a hotel in the central region of the federal capital.
political negotiations
The future chief minister of the Civil House stated that there is no impasse between the composition of the new government and the vote on the Proposal for a Constitutional Amendment (PEC) which eases the spending cap rule for maintaining the Bolsa Família at R$ 600. Articles published in the press in recent days point out that party leaders in the Chamber of Deputies would be conditioning the approval of the PEC to possible appointments to ministries.
“The president has been emphatic that he does not want to mix the two things. Voting by the House with the choice of ministries. He is being very emphatic, he will not mix the two things. The vote by the House, the president expects, we hope, the The Brazilian people expect the Chamber’s attitude to be similar to that of the Senate. In other words, the vote was based on the Senate’s concern for Brazil, for the Brazilian people, for those most in need in Brazil. The Senate, at no time, conditioned to a negotiation of ministries or positions, and we have the confidence, belief, that the Chamber will do the same thing”, he said.
