One of the government’s promises for next year, zero fares on public transport, depends on the completion of technical studies by the Ministry of Finance to move forward, the Minister of Cities, Jader Filho, reported this Monday (8). Only after presenting the numbers, he highlighted, will the two departments begin to build a joint proposal for a financing model.
In a meeting with journalists, the minister avoided giving details about the proposal. He only defended a federative pact involving the Union, states and municipalities.
“All entities of the Federation need to establish shared solutions, with each one contributing”, argues the minister.
He highlighted that the municipalities themselves have established zero-fare initiatives for public transport on certain days of the week and that this will be taken into account by the federal government.
For Jader Filho, the country can no longer postpone the debate on the implementation of zero tariffs.
“We are approaching a process that the whole world is already dealing with, and Brazil will not be able to avoid this discussion [sobre a gratuidade do transporte público]”, he said.
Joint contribution
The minister assesses that the current public transport financing model “does not stand still” and has been contributing to the scrapping of the system and the drop in the number of users.
According to the minister, there is a rapid scrapping process that is expelling users from public transport. “This model that exists no longer works,” he stated.
Budget
Jader Filho also highlighted that the department committed almost the entire R$ 501.4 million released by the economic team at the end of November.
According to the minister, of the approximately R$15 billion in the department’s budget for this year, only R$15 million, the thousandth part, was not committed.
