The amount of resources actually released by the government is equivalent to that of 2024; amount reserved for the 2026 election year is a record
The president’s government (PT) ended 2025 with the payment of R$31,538,556,264 in . According to data from the (Integrated Planning and Budget System), this is the highest nominal amount ever paid.
For the 2026 election year, when Lula and most of the congressmen will try to renew their mandates in October, the amount disbursed should continue on an upward trajectory. The LDO (Budget Guidelines Law) sanctioned by the president on Wednesday (Dec 31, 2025) plans for federal deputies and senators to allocate resources to projects and works of interest to them.
During the 3rd year of Lula’s current term, the government effectively paid 67% of the amount committed for amendments. Here is the trajectory of commitments (reserves) and payments (release of money) in recent years, in nominal values, that is, without taking inflation into account:
- 2015: R$3.4 billion (committed) and R$44.9 million (paid);
- 2016: R$7.3 billion (committed) and R$2 billion (paid);
- 2017: R$10.7 billion (committed) and R$2.3 billion (paid);
- 2018: R$11.3 billion (committed) and R$5.1 billion (paid);
- 2019: R$13 billion (committed) and R$5.7 billion (paid);
- 2020: R$35.4 billion (committed) and R$16.1 billion (paid);
- 2021: R$33.4 billion (committed) and R$15.9 billion (paid);
- 2022: R$25.5 billion (committed) and R$17 billion (paid);
- 2023: R$35.4 billion (committed) and R$21.9 billion (paid);
- 2024: R$44.9 billion (committed) and R$31.4 billion (paid);
- 2025: R$47.1 billion (committed) and R$31.5 billion (paid).
The effective payment of amendments gained strength in Brazil after 2015, with the approval that year of individual mandatory amendments. Before, the government did not necessarily need to pay for parliamentary amendments. With the imposition, he was forced to pay the amounts. Parliamentary amendments strengthened again in 2019, when bench amendments also became mandatory.
The year 2020 marked the beginning of a Congressional maneuver that became known as “secret budget”. Deputies and senators began to concentrate values on the so-called rapporteur’s amendments, with criteria that were not very transparent in the allocation of funds. The STF (Supreme Federal Court) banned the practice at the end of 2022, but control of resources via Congress remained high.
Currently, the Budget has 3 types of amendments through which congressmen allocate funds for projects or works of interest to them:
- Individual amendments: have been mandatory (mandatory payment) since 2015;
- Bench amendments: allocation of the resource is defined by deputies from the same State, they have been mandatory since 2019;
- Committee amendments: congressmen from a thematic group (education, health, transport, etc.) define the application of the money. Unlike the others, these amendments do not have mandatory payment.
The execution of parliamentary amendments became a central point of conflict between the Lula government and Centrão in 2025. Holding the majority of seats in Congress, the parties that make up the group pressured the Executive for greater flexibility in payments, since they control the majority of committee amendments.
The distribution of these amendments reflects the weight of the benches in Congress: the greater the number of congressmen, the greater the ability to request individual amendments and influence committee amendments.
