LatinNews Daily Report - 21 May 2013

POLITICS | Bolsa Família “sacred”, says Rousseff.  On 20 May President Dilma Rousseff declared that funds for the government’s flagship social welfare scheme, Bolsa Família, were “sacred”, following rumours over the weekend of its imminent discontinuation. Rousseff slammed the rumours as “absurd”, “inhuman” and “criminal” and promised a federal police investigation into the source. The rumour sparked a weekend run on cash machines in the north east of the country, where the vast majority of the beneficiaries live.  “Our commitment to the Bolsa Família is strong, deep and definitive. We will not touch it”, she stated at a ceremony in the port municipality of Ipojuca, in the northern state of Pernambuco. The scheme, which pays mothers a small monthly cash stipend in return for ensuring that their children attend school and have regular health check-ups, has been credited with lifting millions of the most vulnerable families out of destitution and giving them an opportunity to integrate into the workforce, at very little cost to the State (roughly 1.5% of GDP). It has been copied worldwide. It currently benefits 13.8m families in Brazil. Critics say it is a largescale vote-buying scheme and locks the beneficiaries into dependence on the welfare State. Rousseff, who is expected to seek re-election for a second term in 2014, previously has said that the scheme should be just the first step on the way out of poverty, giving the most vulnerable women and children a leg-up. The Brazilian opposition says it would leave the scheme in place but make it more transparent and less open to abuse.

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