New growth program to have policy to avoid shortage of labor

07/25/2023

Maurício Muniz — Foto: Roque de Sá/Agência Senado

The remodeled PAC — Growth Acceleration Program — will have a branch dedicated to training and professional outplacement. The goal is to avoid a repetition of the collapse of labor that took place in previous editions of the program. Another idea is to try to include in the new axis the population in the so-called Federal Unified Registration, that is, those poor families that are recipients of social programs.

The Special Secretary of Coordination and Monitoring of the Chief of Staff Office, Maurício Muniz, told Valor that the “Qualifica PAC” was created as another of the institutional measures of the program. In addition, the CIA PAC, the Commission for Innovation and Acquisitions, will be reinstated and will take care of the policy of prioritizing local sourcing within the framework of the program.

The official announcement of the list of projects had been confirmed for Thursday but was postponed. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wants a big event, full of politicians, which would be more difficult with the recess of the National Congress. In addition, there is a desire that the announcement be made only after the new fiscal framework is passed by the deputies.

Meanwhile, the technical teams are working on the final details. The number of strategic axes of the PAC has been redesigned and expanded from seven to nine. The axes are now: Transport; Sustainable Cities; Defense; Digital Inclusion and Connectivity; Water for All; Health; Energy Transition and Security; Education, Science and Technology; and Social and Inclusive Infrastructure.

The Chief of Staff Office Minister Rui Costa will also meet individually with the 27 governors to announce which projects have been considered by the New PAC and which have been left out, as well as the reasons for each choice. The meetings are expected to begin in the next few days.

The goal of the qualifying program, called Qualifica PAC, is to connect the dots between the works and the demand for labor. The deputy secretary of Rogério da Veiga, in charge of the plan, said that the adherence between supply and demand for workers is fundamental to avoid any bottlenecks delaying the works.

For example, the Ministry of Labor has already identified a potential shortage of occupational safety professionals. Based on this information, the “Qualifica PAC” working group is designing the best alternatives, which could be the federal government’s own training programs or even partnerships with the S System — a group of tax-funded training entities operated by employers’ trade groups

“An arrangement can be made with funds from the S System itself under this gratuity agreement that they have with the federal government,” he said.

There is also an intention to make the best use of the availability of work for the people served by the cash-transfer programs. Based on labor demand maps, the Chief of Staff Office will work with the Ministry of Social Development on actions to employ this population.

“Historically in Brazil, when you have cycles of economic growth, these are the families that end up being more excluded from that process,” said Mr. Veiga. “What we’re doing is a government effort to make this inclusion viable.”

Another institutional measure of the New PAC will be the reinstatement of the local sourcing policy and government purchases linked to the program. The idea is to map the demand that will be generated by the works and find a way to consider the national industry to the maximum, without excessive pressure on costs or the risk of delaying projects.

“The idea is to use the public procurement instruments available to activate these chains,” said Marcos Toscano, a special advisor to the deputy head of Coordination and Monitoring of the Chief of Staff Office. The Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, and the development bank BNDES are responsible for calibrating the use of local sourcing requirements and the margin of preference for projects.

In local sourcing, public policy defines a minimum percentage of equipment that must be produced in the country. The margin of preference authorizes the payment of a slightly higher value for products manufactured by the national industry.

In cases where the Brazilian industry cannot supply, the policy is also intended to provide incentives for investment in innovation. This would be done, according to Mr. Toscano, by recommending that the Ministry of Science and Technology and Finep open credit lines for the development of these production chains.

Concerning the criticism that the PAC is too governmental, Mr. Muniz argues that the coordination of public policies around a large investment program can only happen with the direct participation of the government in the process.

“If we add these institutional measures to the portfolio of works, it is clear the importance of the inducing state, since in the recent past we have witnessed the dismantling and a discourse that only the market can handle,” said the PAC coordinator.

*Por Murillo Camarotto — Brasília

Source: Valor International

https://valorinternational.globo.com/