The minister of the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services (MGI), Esther Dweck, stated this Monday (30) that, of the 13 state-owned companies that recorded a deficit in the calculation carried out by the Central Bank, nine made a profit. Companies, according to her, should be evaluated by corporate accounting, not public accounting.
“A deficit is not a loss. And a company is not valued based on the results of public accounting. It has to be evaluated by the results of business accounting. In business accounting, when the investment is made, this expense is deferred over time, because it takes time to amortize that expense, it does not appear as a full expense for the year. When she uses the cash precept, she does not generate losses”, stated the minister.
According to the BC, federal public companies had a deficit of R$6.04 billion from January to November this year. The minister acknowledged that, of the total companies considered, three presented some type of loss, as is the case of Correios – which, according to her, has a relevant impact on the data released by the monetary authority.
Dweck said that the Central Bank’s results are calculated monthly and only take into account income and expenses for that year. She mentioned that many companies included in BC statistics received contributions from the National Treasury in 2019 and 2020, which generated a surplus on the balance sheet. Much of this money, said the minister, was used to increase companies’ cash flow, not necessarily for the resources to be used.
With the withdrawal of these state-owned companies from the National Privatization Plan by the current government, companies were allowed to resume investment expenses, according to Dweck.
“From the moment we allowed these companies to invest again, many of them are using cash resources. And this generates, from an accounting point of view, from a public accounting point of view, a deficit result. But this does not mean that they suffered losses”, he argued.
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The minister said that the team has strived to publish accounting and business data simultaneously with the Central Bank’s results. She also reinforced that the government is very attentive to the sustainability of state-owned companies and recalled that a decree was recently signed to reduce the financial dependence of some companies.
