President of the institution, Marcio Pochmann, appointed by Lula, says he seeks to “highlight the current leadership position in Brazil”
The President of (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), Marcio Pochmann, on the night of Wednesday (7.MAI.2025), in his profile in the X (formerly Twitter), a Umbrella Map, showing Brazil in the Center. According to him, the intention is “highlight the current leadership position”From the country.
“IBGE has launched a new world map with Brazil in the center, containing the south at the top of the map, also identified by inverted map. The news seeks to emphasize Brazil’s current leadership position in important international forums such as BRICS and MERCOSUR and COP30 [Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre as Mudanças Climáticas] In the year 2025”Wrote Pochmann.
This was not the first time the institute changed the way to display the world map. In April 2024, the IBGE, but without the map being upside down.
The document was part of the 9th edition of the School Geographic Atlas. The version, however, a series of errors. One sequence exchanged the maps of the Jurassic periods (which he says it was 135 million years ago) and Cretaceous (65 million years) – a different from 70 million years. It also brought incorrect information about the age, duration of geological periods and separation of continents on the planet. At the time, IBGE recognized the flaws and published an errata.
Read more about the errors of Poder360.
Nominated by the Government of (PT), Pochmann was appointed to the position on August 18, 2023. He has already chaired the Perseu Abramo Foundation, linked to the PT, and the Lula Institute. He was also president of IPEA (Institute of Applied Economic Research).
With, the IBGE head has already criticized PIX, labor and social security reforms and defended the reduction of working hours.
Pochmann’s management at the head of the IBGE has been the target of several criticisms from ASSIBGE (National IBGE Workers Union), which accuses the president of the organ of “authoritarianism”. His performance in the Institute is also criticized internally for supposedly arose IBGE and made a more ideological administration.
Employees of the Institute that management “has been guided by authoritarian postures and disrespect for the staff”.
One of the complaints is about the IBGE+Foundation, created in 2024. The entity is a Public Foundation for Private Law, linked to IBGE. The agency’s employees call it “Parallel IBGE”.
The foundation was on January 24 by the government.
Pochmann participated, on April 23, a public hearing at the Senate Transparency, Surveillance and Control Commission). .
He stated: “Democracy allows people to manifest themselves. We absorb and seek to sophisticate our forms of communication to perform better in relation to the house”.
Pochmann denied that the creation of the IBGE Foundation+ was conducted confidentially, as the employees claim. According to him, the proposal came during the 1st National Congress of IBGE servers, held in November 2023.
“[O evento] It was preceded by working groups, there are 9 groups. One of them, group number 1, discussed the financing issue, such as improving the conditions of such a restricted budget”He said.
The president of the institute stated that IBGE has been budgetary cutting and that personnel costs have increased in recent years. He argued that the creation of IBGE+ would be one of the ways to expand the institution’s budget.
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