After pressure from representatives of Sports and Culture, the government decided to go back on the allocation of lottery money. By the end of the month, a Provisional Measure should withdraw R$ 208 million (US$54mn) that would go to the new Ministry of Public Security. With MP, the economic team wants to encourage gambling.
The prizes for bets of two gaming modalities must grow. And Caixa Econômica Federal will be authorized to create a new business front similar to the "Cartola" game, where bettors can bet on the player who will score the goals, for example. With this, the government intends to make lotteries move 1% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) a year. Currently, their turnover represents 0.2% of GDP. The forecast is to quintuple this in ten years.
To achieve this goal, it is not enough to only increase the prizes, but also to grant Lotex, responsible for scratch cards. A new auction will be announced in two months. With that money in mind, atlethes and artists pressured the government to modify the MP launched when the Ministry of Public Security was created. At the time, the new body took the resources allocated to the two areas.
The federal government has reached an agreement to edit a new Provisional Measure that will allocate part of the revenue from federal lotteries to the ministries of Public Safety, Culture and Sport. In total, it will be allocated R$ 2 billion (US$520mn) for the areas through funds raised with lotteries.
The new measure will revoke MP 841/2018, currently in force, which allocates R$ 1.2 billion (US$311mn) to the National Public Security Fund (FNSP), but reduces resources from other portfolios, which generated a negative reaction. By MP 841, the Sport would receive R$ 430 million (US$111mn) -before it was R$ 830 million (US$215mn)- and Culture with R$ 404 million (US$105mn) -before it was R$ 410 million (US$106mn)-.
For the new text, it is expected to allocate about R$ 1 billion (US$260mn) for Public Security, R$ 630 million (US$163mn) for Sport, and R$ 412 million (US$107) for Culture. In order to be able to contemplate all the ministries, the government reduced the value destined for the Public Security and also reduced increase in the values of the prizes of the winners of the called numerical prognostic lottery, as it is the case of Mega Sena.
MP 841, which will be repealed by the end of the month, predicts an increase of 43.35% to 50% in the value of the "Sena's" prizes compared to what is raised with the bets from 2019. Now, with the new measure, the value will increase to only 43.79%. This allowed the government to "return" resources to Culture and Sports, which had already received the resources before the MP.
According to the Minister of Government, Carlos Marun, the government will send the new MP by the end of this month, during the parliamentary recess, so that the National Congress can consider it from August.
Initially, when editing MP 841, the government argued that cuts in the Ministries of Culture and Sport dealt only with resources that would not actually be used by the sectors. Carlos Marun explained that the contingent resources had an expectation of release throughout the year and that this ended up "generating a doubt", which was later clarified.
"In the first MP we thought that some resources would be contingent and therefore would not reach the beneficiaries, but we concluded that there was a risk of a real decrease in Culture and Sport. The most effective way to achieve our goals would be revocation of MP 841 and replacement by another MP," said Carlos Marun.
In a statement, the Ministry of Culture celebrated the government's decision to edit a new MP and said there was "sensitivity to the cultural sector's struggle". "The MinC participated actively in the negotiations for the preparation of the new provisional measure and receives with great happiness the result of the process, which represents a clear recognition of the importance of the cultural sector and the public policy of Culture for the development of the country and also for the reduction of violence and crime," the statement said.
Source: GMB / Istoé
