The federal government accumulated a primary deficit of R$105.2 billion in the first nine months of the year. The deficit is greater than that recorded in the same period in 2023, when the accumulated deficit was R$94.3 billion, in nominal terms.
The numbers were released by the National Treasury this Thursday (7) and do not include interest payments on public debt. The negative primary result indicates that the government needed to take on new debt to cover daily expenses.
“This result was made up of a surplus of R$160.6 billion in the National Treasury and the Central Bank and a deficit of R$265.8 billion in Social Security”, informed the Treasury.
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In the sum of values from January to September, net revenue (already discounting transfers to states and municipalities) increased by 6.4% in real terms, which corresponds to an increase of R$94.2 billion over the same period last year. Spending grew more: 6.5%, or R$101.4 billion.
The government is counting on a reduction in the primary deficit in the last months of the year. According to , released on September 20, the expectation is to end the year with a primary deficit of R$28.3 billion, just R$500 million above the lower limit of the fiscal target, which authorizes a deficit of a maximum of 0.25% of the GDP this year – equivalent to R$28.8 billion, according to the economic team.
Separately, the September result was also negative. In the month, the government recorded a primary deficit of R$5.3 billion, above the median expectations collected by the Prisma Fiscal survey, which indicated a deficit of R$2 billion. The result is also worse than that of September 2023, when the Treasury obtained a primary surplus of R$11.6 billion, in nominal terms.
On strike, Treasury technicians do not release detailed tables on the primary deficit
Fiscal statistics were published incompletely. Unlike previous occasions, when the Treasury simultaneously published the report and all tables referring to the primary result, this time only a summary was released to the press. Therefore, part of the numbers cited above are nominal, without correction for inflation. Some of the values in real terms, updated, were omitted in the Treasury text. Detailed information will only be published next week.
According to the Treasury’s press office, the reason is “career movement”, that is, the civil servant strike. Although it tabulated the complete data, the technical staff “did not release the document to be made available” to the press at this first stage.
