In the “Good Day Minister” program, the Minister for Social Development and Fight Against Hunger, Tereza Campello, answered questions from journalists from all over the country about the new amounts to be paid under the cash transfer program.
Brasilia, May 9, 2014 – The increase of 10%, announced last week, of the poverty and extreme poverty line is based on the indicator used by the United Nations for its Millennium Development Goals: US$1.25 per day per person. The value was adjusted by purchasing power parity. According to the Minister for Social Development and Fight Against Hunger, Tereza Campello, speaking on the “Good Day Minister” program on Friday, May 9, “This is a minimum level that Brazilians are entitled to. We do not accept that anyone should live on less than this”.
Bolsa Familia beneficiaries will be able to withdraw the increased benefit as from June, in accordance with the payment schedule which always falls during the last 10 days of the month.
The extreme poverty line in Brazil has been adjusted upwards from R$70 to R$77. The variable benefit paid to pregnant women, nursing mothers, children and adolescents up to age 15 increases from R$32 to R$35, up to a limit of R$175 per month per family. The variable benefit for adolescents up to age 17 increases from R$38 to R$42 a month, with an upper limit of R$84 per family. The Minister stressed that “The Bolsa Familia is a supplement to family incomes and helps to feed children and buy school supplies and clothes”.
Tereza Campello said that the value of the Bolsa Familia benefits had increased on six occasions during President Dilma Rousseff´s government. “In the government´s early days, we increased the benefit by 45% for households with children. We also increased the number of eligible children from three to five. Furthermore, we established the extreme poverty line and supplemented the benefits of extremely poor families with children so that they would not receive less than R$70 per person.” The Minister also recalled that the supplement to the basic benefit was later extended to families with children aged from 7 to 15 years, and subsequently to all the beneficiaries of the Program.
Asked whether the increases were politically motivated in the current election year, the Minister replied: ” If you have a program that is clearly not electorally-biased it is the Bolsa Familia Program. It was created in 2003, which was not an election year, and over the three and a half years of President Dilma´s mandate we have had six adjustments. What we cannot accept is that the poor should be discriminated against simply because we are in an election year. We will continue with the work we have been doing for 11 years.”
Campello also answered questions from journalists from around the country about the myths surrounding the Bolsa Familia since it was created, such as the allegation that the benefits would make people lazy. “People think that whoever benefits from the Bolsa Familia does no work. Most of the beneficiaries do not work because they are under 18 years old and going to school, which is precisely where we want them to be. As for the adults, 75% of them certainly work.”
The Minister went on to say that the Federal Government is also investing in the professional qualification of the poorest members of the population. “Our commitment is to provide professional training for those most in need of it. In the PRONATEC Brazil Without Poverty program, for example, President Dilma´s commitment is to qualify one million low-income people. In March we celebrated the fact that 1 million people in this sector of the population had enrolled in this program. These are people who are not only poor but also have low education levels. The figures amply show that these people are not lazy and want to improve their lives. ”
She went on to say that the Bolsa Familia Program has a positive economic impact given that “every R$1 applied in the Program returns R$1.78 to the country´s GDP.” Another major benefit of the Program, according to Campello, is that children today are no longer dying of hunger and are attending school. “This is a priceless asset for the country in the medium term. 10 years from now we will not have a large part of the adult population illiterate or uneducated. Ten 10 years from now this will be a different country.” The Bolsa Familia supplements the incomes of 14.1 million households thoughout the country, helping 36 million Brazilians to remain above the poverty line.
To access the full interview in Portuguese click here .
Source: Communication Office/MDS .