In an interview on Friday (21) to ICL Notícias, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said that the first action of the federal government to contain food inflation is the expansion of the Safra Plan, which supports the agricultural sector and offers lines of credit, incentives and agricultural policies to farmers.
“The first action is as follows: Let’s make increasingly robust, larger and better harvests. And the government [do presidente] Lula goes to his third year preparing a third large plan. We hit two records in 2023 and 2024 and we want to do the same in 2025. As soon as the budget is approved, we will launch the crop plan for the next harvest and I want to believe that Brazil has all the conditions to continue to expand the production properly , without deforestation, which fell vertiginously in the country, ”he said.
According to the minister, the problems caused by drought and floods in 2024, as well as the maintenance of US interest on high levels that impacted the value of the dollar worldwide, contributed to the increase in inflation in Brazil. These problems, he said, need to be circumvented by the current government.
“We had episodes that need to be circumvented. We had drought and flood problem last year, this affected. We had the maintenance of American interest at very high levels, which makes the dollar very strong worldwide. And when the dollar is very strong, it causes inflation worldwide, ”he said.
During the interview with ICL Notícias journalists Leandro and Deborah Magagna, Haddad stressed that the expectation is to pace this year that there is a large crop, perhaps record, which should help lower the price of food. “We will probably reap a large crop from the end of this month, early March. A large crop, if not the largest will be one of the largest. And this is how we will continue to export a lot of food and ensure internal supply, ”he said.
This record crop, coupled with the fall of the dollar, said the minister, should help in the drop in food price. “With the fall of the dollar, which began to lower to levels more adherent to the foundations of the Brazilian economy, and with the crop that will enter the end of the month, we believe these prices will stabilize at a more appropriate level.”
Another measure needed to help in the fall in food prices, said Haddad, has been taken by the Minister of Agriculture, Carlos Fávaro: the expansion of productions from a given agricultural culture to other regions of the country. “He has made several new instruments about food production through the national territory. This is the case of rice, for example, which is very concentrated in a region and now there is an attempt to spread cultures by various states. We are in a period of climate crisis. We will have to deal with the issue of climate change today, diversifying cultures through the territory, ”he added.
Budget
In the interview, Haddad criticized Congress’s delay in budget approval. For him, the budget needs to be approved as soon as possible so that the government can continue to subsidize farmers. This morning, the Ministry of Finance said it had forwarded a letter to the Federal Court of Auditors seeking “technical and legal backing for the immediate resumption of credit lines with equal resources from the 24/25 crop plan”.
According to the minister, high interest rates end up making public policies of subsidy for small and medium rural producers even more important to ensure the crop. “In general, we compensate for the increase in Selic so as not to compromise production,” he explained.
Without budget approval, the minister said, this allowance to the small or medium producer becomes difficult to do. “The budget has not been approved yet. I even sent to one of the FPA leaders [Frente Parlamentar de Apoio à Agropecuária] A statement, saying that we are officiating TCU today about this problem of non -budget approval. We don’t want any discontinuity of the credit lines [do Plano Safra]”He said.
I want to believe that, approved the budget, a balanced budget, we will have, in the medium term, lower interest rates and with fiscal sustainability, without penalizing the population that depends on the state, including producers who also depend on the state to continue producing cheap food ”.
Previous government
During the interview, Haddad criticized the previous government’s performance during the election year. For him, the fear of losing the elections in 2022 resulted in the use of public resources without control to try to win.
According to the minister, this led to a loss of control over spending. Contrary to what, according to him, has been done by the current government, which is improving the management of programs such as the BPC (continued benefit benefit).
“It has nothing to do with cut, it has to do with rationality and responsibility to ensure that it will have a long life, it will not end in a government, it will become a state policy and no one will then relate its hand to take a guaranteed social right by law, ”he said.
