The Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, Guilherme Boulos, said, this Wednesday (25), that the government is developing a project so that the population can directly influence the preparation of the Union Budget. The initiative, called People’s Budget, aims to encourage citizen participation in the definition of public money.
According to Boulos, the project should be launched next month and, in this first year, it will only be didactic, as the The 2026 budget has already been approved and sanctioned. “The idea is, precisely, to create this culture of people pointing fingers and deciding what they need in their municipality, what the priority is,” he said in an interview with Good morning, Minister programfrom Canal Gov.
“The whole of Brazil is following the secret budget scandal. What is the secret budget? It’s taking a giant slice, this year there was R$61 billion in parliamentary amendments and then, often, there is no transparency. This money goes down the drain, we don’t know where it is going. What are we going to do? Show that it is possible for the people to take ownership of the Brazilian government’s budget”, he explained.
Parliamentary amendment is a way of allocating resources from the public budget, indicated by deputies and senators for specific purposes, generally for works, services or projects in their regions.
With the People’s Budget, according to minister Guilherme Boulos, each citizen will be able to vote, once, on a proposal to be implemented in their city. In the first year, the objective is to reach around 400 municipalities, including all capitals.
The project will have a defined budget for each location and the resources will come from the ministries that join the initiative. Seven portfolios are already in the People’s Budget.
“For example, Health was already going to spend on Samu’s ambulance. So, part of this expense we will let the people define which are the priority cities. So, you will have, for example, R$ 1 million for an ambulance or you will be able to choose squares with Wi-Fi, which is a project of the Ministry of Communication; or choose classrooms with air conditioning, which is a project to air-condition the schools of the Ministry of Education; or so many MovCEU, which is a project of the Ministry of Culture to bring culture traveling to the communities”, he explained.
The proposal with the most votes is the one that will be delivered by the government, said the minister. “When you create this culture – of putting your finger on and saying where the money goes – no one holds back the people anymore. And that’s what we want,” added Boulos.
