THE government is freezing 69.9 billion reais, or $22.6 billion, in spending from this year’s budget, the Budget Ministry said on Friday. It made the announcement hours after the government said it would raise taxes on profits at banks, brokerages and credit-card processors to 20 percent from 15 percent.
President Dilma Rousseff is trying to rein in the largest budget gap in 16 years that threatens Brazil’s investment grade. While Friday’s measures will help, the slowing economy and reluctance among lawmakers to approve tax increases and cuts to labor benefits are hindering her efforts, Newton Rosa, chief economist at Sul America Investimentos Dtvm SA, said.
“Whether the freeze will be enough is a question mark,” he said. “You can’t work miracles in a budget where 90 percent is earmarked. There is limited discretionary space.”
Stocks in Brazil’s largest banks fell sharply on Friday after the government raised taxes on industry profits, sending the benchmark Ibovespa index down 1.3 percent on the day. The index fell 5 percent this week, the worst decline since December.
In the currency markets, the real dropped as much as 2.1 percent and ended the day at 3.09 per US dollar. The cost to insure the nation’s debt for five years rose less than 1 basis point to 222 basis points.
‘Considerable’ effort
“There were no great surprises, and the announcement came almost at the close of markets,”said Joao Pedro Brugger, a money manager at Leme Investimentos in Florianopolis, Brazil.
The budget freeze, which doesn’t require approval from lawmakers, focuses on cutting current expenditures, discretionary spending in Congress and some infrastructure programs, Planning Minister Nelson Barbosa told reporters. For example, the government is reducing 5.6 billion reais from its subsidized-housing program.
“It’s a considerable fiscal effort,” Barbosa said, adding that the government is focused on preserving spending on health, education and other social-security benefits.
The tax measure on banks, which becomes effective September 1, will boost tax collection by about 750 million reais in 2015, and 3.8 billion reais next year, according to the tax agency. Itau Unibanco Holding SA estimates the increase may cost banks as much as 8 percent of their earnings in the long term, according to a report it published on Friday.
Pushing Congress
The Brazilian banking federation Febraban declined to comment on the tax increase in an e-mailed response. The tax hike shows that Finance Minister Joaquim Levy is taking the initiative to meet his targets, said Carlos Kawall, chief economist at Banco Safra.
“It reinforces the expectation that the government will do whatever it takes to reach the budget target,” Kawall said in a phone interview before the budget announcement.
Levy pledges to reverse last year’s deficit and post a 2015 budget surplus that excludes interest payment of 1.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The target was revised from 1.2 percent due to a change in methodology for calculating GDP. Barbosa said Levy was ill and couldn’t attend Friday’s news conference.
Levy has been pushing proposals in Congress to cap social security benefits worth as much as 27.3 billion reais in a year. The Senate on Wednesday delayed until next week the vote on a key portion of Levy’s austerity package after several members of Rousseff’s coalition balked at the belt tightening.