LatinNews Daily - 30 October 2023

* Brazil’s national treasury has released its monthly report which showed that the federal government registered a primary surplus of R$11.55bn (US$2.30bn) in September. This marks an increase from the surplus of R$10.94bn registered in September 2022. However, the accumulated fiscal statistics for the first nine months of 2023 showed a deficit of R$93.38bn and the accumulated deficit for the 12 months until September 2023 came to R$71.4bn. Despite September’s surplus, concerns about the government’s fiscal discipline were heightened after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gave a press conference on 27 October in which he suggested that it would be difficult to achieve a zero-deficit target next year. When the minister for planning & budget, Simone Tebet, submitted the government’s 2024 budget proposal to congress at the end of August, she insisted on the zero-deficit target; an aim which Lula’s recent comments have contradicted, as the president told the press that “I am not going to set a fiscal objective which might oblige me to start the year by cutting billions in works which are a priority for this country”, adding that “what if Brazil has a deficit of 0.5%, or 0.25% [of GDP], so what?”.