Brazil’s government announced a sudden halt in printing passports last week following the evaporation of public funds for such use. This week, Brazil’s Congress attempted to pass legislation reappropriating funds for education to the passport program, although it appears the latest plan in motion will take money out of the nation’s U.N. funding for this purpose.
On Wednesday, the Brazilian national police announced that it would no longer issue passports, with the exception of emergency situations. According to Bloomberg, “the federal police has exhausted its budget for immigration control and travel documents and won’t be able to restore the service until additional funds are approved.”
The police have protested, with the police association complaining that no longer being able to issue passports “is perhaps the most visible aspect of the dismantling the federal police is suffering” in a statement last week.
Shortly after that announcement, the Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that the government was attempting to reappropriate education funds to pay for passports, given that Brazil’s winter school holiday is close at hand.
According to the initial O Globo report, the Ministry of Planning sought nearly $31 million ($102.3 million reais) from the Ministry of Education “to normalize the passport issue” in a proposal sent to Congress for appropriations approval on Thursday. The programs allegedly affected would have been “initial and continuing training for basic education, youth and adult literacy programs, undergraduate, research and extension activities and initiatives to value diversity and promote rights humans.”
On Friday, however, O Globo reported that Congress would instead deplete funds for United Nations projects, following a demand by appropriations commission chair Senator Dário Berger (PMDB-SC) to “find another source of funds.”
Folha de Sao Paulo, another Brazilian newspaper, notes that the problem was highly preventable given that the federal government had been aware of a financial deficit for months. According to Folha, police had requested the funds to continue printing passports nine times this year to no avail.
A passport costs a Brazilian national $77.84 (257.25 reais) and, the newspaper adds, the government generated nearly $175 million (578 million reais) in passport payments in 2016. This money did not go towards paying for passport printing, however, and was instead distributed throughout the government.
Brazil’s government – and its police in particular – have suffered significant underfunding in part due to the extravagant expenses under impeached leftist president Dilma Rousseff, who brought both the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics to Brazil. The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics were particularly damaging to the nation’s finances, costing the government nearly $5 billion.
Brazilian police greeted tourists arriving for the Olympics with signs reading “Welcome to Hell” and suggesting that police could not properly combat crime because they were so underfunded, they relied on donations to keep toilet paper stocked in police station bathrooms.
Following the end of the Olympics, Rio de Janeiro state continued to be woefully indebted, with hospitals, firefighters, and police suffering the most. Failing to keep payments coming in regularly for its public workers, Rio has also failed to keep its Olympic facilities properly maintained. The legendary Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro was particularly devastated as looters stormed the facility following the Olympics.
As of April, the Olympic Committee remained $32 million in debt.
Brazil’s economy has suffered significantly as a result of these outstanding debts and its political turmoil. A Folha report published Monday cites the Brazilian Institute of Capital Markets (Cemec) as finding that investment rates have fallen to their lowest levels since 2000, “from 19% to 13.7% of the G.D.P. in December in 2016.” The report adds that private sector savings are rising, suggesting that investors simply do not feel comfortable risking their funds in the Brazilian market.