Brasília – Brazil’s federal, state and local governments ran a BRL 4.758 billion (USD 1.476 billion) primary surplus – meaning revenue exceeded expenditure, interest-related spending not included. The information was made public this Wednesday (29) by the Brazilian Central Bank. This was the first surplus in five months. October 2016 had seen a much wider surplus, at BRL 39.589 billion (USD 12.284 billion).
The head of the Central Bank’s Department of Statistics, Fernando Rocha, explained that the wider result in October 2016 came as a result of the so-called Repatriation Law, a program designed to bring funds kept abroad by Brazilian taxpayers back into the country. “Aside from those revenues, there would have been a primary deficit of BRL 5.5 billion (USD 1.7 billion) in October last year.” On the other hand, the October 2017 result was incremented by BRL 5 billion in revenue from the debt refinancing program known as Refis. According to Rocha, apart from this amount, revenue and expenditure would have broken even in October 2017.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum