The third version of the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) still does not have a closed list of undertakings, but the new economic team already knows that it will be necessary to change the worn-out format for disclosing the quarterly report on monitoring works.
The Minister of Planning, Nelson Barbosa, has been talking – still preliminary – with his assistants about the need for a retreading in the PAC 3 format. He will be in charge of the program and invited the PAC secretary, Maurício Muniz, to continue in the office.
The assessment is that the quarterly reports have a confusing format, mix indicators and generate negative repercussions in the media. One idea that has already been considered is to separate the disclosure of the pace of execution of works by sectors – such as energy, transport, housing, sanitation – in order to explore each axis of the program in more detail.
In an academic article, written before the announcement that he would be the new Minister of Finance, Joaquim Levy corroborated this diagnosis and criticized the dissemination model: “The information and means of monitoring the PAC by society need to improve”.
Levy was explicit in pointing out the supposed bloat of the show. “The scope of the PAC militates against the clarity and depth of the information disclosed by the government, especially since it started to include the most varied actions, not least due to its social communication appeal”, wrote the economist, in a text prepared for the Center for Policy Debate Public (CDPP), known as the House of Garças of São Paulo.
“Its balance sheets offer snapshots of the progress of the initiatives, but, in addition to covering a wide range of actions, the mixed presentation of state spending, the private sector, the Federal Budget and housing finance creates figures that are not always easy to interpret”, continued Levy in the text. “Partly because of this, these figures and the disclosed project completion indicators, despite their likely relevance as a control tool for their operators, end up having little impact on the private sector, including among financial analysts, failing to form expectations.”
Remodeling should remain a task for Muniz, called a “walking PAC” by the new Minister of Planning, due to his familiarity with the theme. The secretary has been coordinating the program since it was launched in 2007, and was managed by the Civil House. One of his main assistants, however, must leave office: the current director of the logistics infrastructure department, Marcelo Bruto, is heading to the government of Pernambuco.
Since the beginning, the government has dealt with several fronts of criticism. One of the most common is the alleged abuse of green stamps to demonstrate that works monitored by the program are at an “appropriate” pace. The usual answer is that green does not indicate whether the project is more or less close to completion, but whether there are obstacles to the development of works within the government's range of action, such as issues involving environmental licensing or obstacles in the Federal Court of Auditors. (TCU). This explains, for example, how the pace of projects such as the bullet train, or the Premium 1 refinery, by Petrobras, in Maranhão, can be considered adequate – there are no legal barriers or bureaucratic obstacles blocking their advances.
Another controversial point is to what extent the PAC, whose original proposal was to boost energy and transport infrastructure, would have been transformed into a program centered on investments in the real estate segment. The final balance of PAC 2 indicated that the total executed reached R$ 1,066 trillion between 2011 and 2014., but 42,1% of this amount is housing financing, within or outside the Minha Casa, Minha Vida program.
In the last balance sheet of last year, the government inaugurated a controversial practice. It started to count, as completed PAC 2 actions, undertakings still in their initial stages. With this, it managed to “inflate” the number to R$ 796 billion in investments, with the inclusion in the calculation of the entire disbursement in concessions such as highways and hydroelectric plants. The Sinop and São Manoel plants, on the Teles Pires river, should only enter into commercial operation in 2018, but they appear alongside highway concessions that are in the process of duplicating lanes.
Source: Valor Econômico
By Daniel Rittner and Murillo Camarotto
