The World Bank

Brazil: equitable, competitive, sustainable.

Contributions for debate.

Washington, DC

2003

0821355473

9780821355473

Brazil ranks among the largest countries in the world, in terms of its people, its landmass, and its economy. It is endowed with a highly entrepreneurial people, rich cultural heritage, precious natural resources, well-developed socio-political institutions and a sophisticated economy. Over the last decades, Brazil has made vast progress, in particular in its social indicators and it economic institutions. Brazil -- Equitable, Competitive, Sustainable provides a range of policy information prepared by the World Bank's Brazil Team with partners during 2002. It aims to contribute to the discussion in Brazil and elsewhere about public policies to be formulated by the Brazilian governments for the period 2003-2006, and beyond, as well as being a vehicle to exchange lessons of experience from Brazil to the rest of the world and vice versa. The information presented in this book is organized along five overarching themes: investing in people; improving productivity; managing natural resources; delivering government services to all; and stabilizing the economy.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Acronyms

Overview

PART I
Chapter 1. Education
1. Prioritizing investments that increase educational equity and raise outcomes for the disadvantaged
2. Encouraging municipalities to increase their delivery of preschool services
3. Intensifying practices that enhance the quality and efficiency of schooling
4. Strengthening municipal governance and accountability
5. Accelerating the provision of secondary schooling
6. Improving the quality and efficiency of public higher education and facilitating expansion of quality private higher education

Chapter 2. Health
1. Raising equity through improved resource allocation and targeting of health subsidies
2. Increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of service provision through improved resource allocation and aligned incentives
3. Rationalizing the organization and functioning of SUS
4. Preventing and controling noncommunicable diseases and injuries through health promotion and social interventions

Chapter 3. Social Protection
1. Increasing the potential of the economy to create jobs
2. Achieving better balance within the system of social protection
3. Increasing the effectiveness of social assistance by expanding conditional income transfers, integrating services, and modernizing delivery mechanisms
4. Addressing crime and violence by expanding community-based programs working with at–risk youth, victims of domestic violence, and others

IV BRAZIL: EQUITABLE • COMPETITIVE • SUSTAINABLE – CONTRIBUTIONS FOR DEBATE

PART II
Chapter 4. Financial Sector
1. Increase the depth, reduce the cost, and improve the composition of financial intermediation
2. Improving access to financial services
3. Redirecting directed credit and rationalize federal banks
4. Strengthening financial markets and nonbank financial institutions
5. Reinforcing the regulatory foundations of the financial system

Chapter 5. Infrastructure
1. Building a stable regulatory framework for efficient and equitable provision of infrastructure services
2. Implementing coordinated strategies for infrastructure and capital market development
3. Promoting the development of an integrated multimodal transport system
4. Completing the reform of the energy sector
5. Improving access to local infrastructure services for the poor

Chapter 6. Private Sector Development
1. Reducing barriers to market entry for new firms
2. Improving the regulatory framework
3. Increasing efficiency in the labor market
4. Strengthening property rights and contract enforcement
5. Focusing industrial policy on horizontal evenness across economic activities, a more open trade policy regime, and higher productivity growth
6. Reformulating regional development policies to emphasize competitiveness, good governance, and social development

Chapter 7. Innovation and Knowledge
1. Improving the impact of public funds for R&D
2. Increasing the level and share of private R&D expenditures through a better incentive framework: providing matching grants, strengthening intellectual property rights, improving patent registration, and simplifying the bureaucratic regulatory framework
3. Facilitating the diffusion of innovation and technology and improving the coherence of the national innovation system
4. Increasing efficiency in public higher education, increasing enrollment and quality of private higher education, and particularly focusing on increasing coverage of secondary education

PART III
Chapter 8. Development and Conservation of Forests
1. Striving toward a shared Brazilian vision of the future of the biomes, and planning land use through a participatory process of political negotiation
2. Keeping options open and staying clear of the threshold of irreversibility
3. Getting ahead of the frontier and limiting open access
4. Making standing forest more valuable by promoting its sustainable use, particularly by poor local communities
5. Promoting sustainable growth in the old consolidating frontier

Chapter 9. Rural Development and Natural Resources
1. Focusing on all sectors affecting rural development, not just agriculture
2. Making bold changes to arrest agro-ecological decline and boost economic, social, and environmental sustainability in the semi-arid area of the Northeast
3. Eliminating inefficiency, duplication, and waste in social expenditure programs, reallocating resources to proven, cost-effective, and well-targeted mechanisms
4. Adopting integrated natural resource management to reverse and prevent degradation, encourage preservation, and promote sustainable rural development

Chapter 10. Municipal Urban Services, Housing, and Land Markets
1. Encouraging stronger municipal management and fiscal discipline, to leverage recent progress
2. Integrating urban transport systems and taking advantage of the advances in decentralization
3. Strengthening the relatively well established and decentralized legal institutional framework for pollution management
4. Reformulating a national housing policy using the public sector as an enabler of markets, targeting subsidies to the poor, and deepening housing finance

Chapter 11. Water, Poverty Reduction, and Sustainable Development
1. Creating a sound institutional and legal framework for water resources management to enhance poverty reduction and promote efficient water use and sustainable economic growth
2. Clarifying the institutional, legal, and regulatory framework to modernize the water supply and sanitation sector and improve its effectiveness
3. Introducing appropriate and flexible tools to more effectively manage urban water pollution
4. Introducing a consistent water policy that promotes equity of access to water and sanitation services as a means of reducing poverty and promoting economic development in less developed regions
5. Increasing the provision and expansion of affordable, good quality services by improving the efficiency of water and sanitation companies
6. Identifying priority investments in water resources infrastructure and improving management of existing infrastructure, as prerequisites of further investments

PART IV
Chapter 12. Macroeconomic Stability
1. Maintaining macroeconomic stability as a prerequisite for sustainable long-run growth and poverty reduction
2. Increasing the primary surplus above that achieved in recent years to provide insurance against future shocks and guarantee fiscal sustainability
3. Achieving a more flexible spending structure and a simpler tax structure so that fiscal efforts can rely more on expenditure cuts than on tax increases to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability
4. Managing public debt to moderate rollover risk and mitigate the fiscal dominance problem that arises from the short maturity and indexation of domestic public debt to the Selic rate or the exchange rate
5. Enhancing the effectiveness and credibility of monetary policy to lower interest rates
6. Keeping external sustainability, which requires a substantially positive trade balance, achievable with prudent fiscal and other policies to reduce anti-export bias and promote productivity gains

Chapter 13. Fiscal Sustainability
1. Increasing flexibility in public expenditure
2. Reducing the imbalance in the social security system
3. Reduced earmarking of revenues and mandated spending is critical for regaining flexibility for fiscal policy
4. Better targeting of social expenditures
5. Shifting the tax structure toward less distortionary taxes
6. Continuing to enforce restrictions on subnational borrowing

Chapter 14. Public Sector
1. Increasing flexibility in public expenditures and improving allocative efficiency through better policy planning and budget management
2. Strengthening institutional incentives and capacities for efficient service delivery and fair access
3. Professionalizing human resources throughout the public sector
4. Reorienting judicial reform to redress the supply and demand gap in judicial service provision
5. Responding to citizen concerns about crime and violence through a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system

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17.04.2018