Researcher defends review of the Municipality Participation Fund

However, since the 2010 Census, the average annual growth rate has been 0.52%, the lowest in history. In this scenario, a large number of municipalities recorded a population decline. Depending on the variation, the reduction has an impact on the amount to be received from the Municipalities Participation Fund (FPM), which has been generating a series of political reactions from different actors.

Ricardo Ojima, a researcher at the Department of Demography and Actuarial Sciences at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), observes that dissatisfaction is manifested above all by representatives of small cities, even in capitals such as Salvador, Natal, Belém, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro registered population reduction. He believes that the model is sold out.

“Capitals and large municipalities depend little on the distribution of the FPM. The greatest impact is on smaller municipalities, whose budgets are more dependent on the transfer of the fund in proportional terms. As population growth in Brazil is in the process of stabilizing, it is certain that many municipalities will start to lose population, with the exception of those that manage to attract particular migratory movements. This is the general trend and this has been known for a long time”, he says.

According to Ojima, it is necessary to think of new distribution formats that take into account other factors, reducing the weight of the number of inhabitants in the calculation. “What we need to start debating is that the FPM model practically assumes that the population will grow infinitely. From now on, it’s always jumping to the lowest coefficient”.

Brazil usually performs the Demographic Census every ten years. It is the only household survey that covers all municipalities in the country. The information collected subsidizes the elaboration of public policies and decisions related to the allocation of financial resources. The 2022 Census was supposed to take place in 2020, but it was postponed twice: first due to the covid-19 pandemic and then due to budget adversities.

With the delays, the distribution of the FPM, which takes into account the population data calculated in the census, was being made to the municipalities still based on the 2010 survey. Income (IR) and with the Tax on Industrialized Products (IPI). According to data from the National Treasury, in 2022, 146.3 billion were distributed. Of the total, 10% are allocated to capitals and 3.6% to municipalities in the interior with more than 142,633 inhabitants.

The remaining 86.4% of the fund is distributed among cities with less than 142,633 inhabitants. For this distribution, data from the last census are forwarded by the IBGE to the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), which in turn fixes the coefficient for each municipality. It is calculated by applying a methodology defined by law, which also takes into account income. per capita.

The TCU even published, at the end of last year, new coefficients based on the previous estimate of the 2022 Census released by the IBGE. However, several municipalities went to court and obtained a favorable decision at the Federal Supreme Court (STF). The court prohibited any updates without final 2022 Census data.

According to a survey by the National Confederation of Municipalities (CNM) presented last Thursday (29), one day after the release of the final results by the IBGE, the new numbers lower the coefficient of 770 municipalities and increase that of 249. “Approximately 61% of the municipalities in the states of Amazonas and Rondônia lost coefficients, followed by the municipalities of Amapá (33%), Pará (33%) and Alagoas (32%). lost coefficients, while the percentage for the Northeast is 18%; for the Center West and Southeast, 11%; and for the South, 8%”, informed the CNM in a note.

The impacts on the budget of these municipalities, however, will not be immediate because President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sanctioned, also last week, Complementary Law 198/2023. It creates a long transition process to reduce transfers related to the FPM. Each year, the municipality will lose 10% of the total that should be subtracted based on the new coefficient. Thus, only after ten years, the value will be 100% updated according to the population data collected. This transition rule must be observed whenever a new census is carried out.

According to a note released by the federal government, the change prevents sudden drops in revenue that jeopardize the continuity of public policies. Complementary Law 198/2023 does not affect municipalities that had a jump in the coefficient, guaranteeing the increase in their budget normally, without any transition period.

reliable data

When releasing the survey, the CNM questioned the quality of the 2022 Census data. On Monday (3), the IBGE issued a statement, assuring the “indisputable reliability” of the published result. On his social networks, researcher Ricardo Ojima criticized the lack of trust in institutions and defended the work of the IBGE, noting that all censuses face some difficulties. “Even if there are problems, there are techniques to avoid potential distortions,” he said.

The CNM’s argument is based on the difference between the 203 million inhabitants indicated by the 2022 Census, the 207 million calculated by the IBGE in a preview released in December last year, and the 2013 million estimated in 2021 based on demographic projections. “Very accentuated deviations between the estimated and effective population indicate errors in estimates, with serious consequences for municipal management”, added the confederation.

In the statement, the IBGE informs that it carried out the 2022 Census strictly following the recommendations, parameters and protocols set by the UN Statistics Division. It also claims that this was the most technological edition and with the greatest real-time monitoring and analysis in the history of Brazil, with meticulous follow-up and quality control. In addition, the IBGE states that independent specialists, with UN seal, were called to evaluate the results, and the opinion will be published shortly.

“During the collection, the GPS coordinates of the addresses visited were successfully captured, as well as the routes used by the census takers in the census sectors. This advance allowed the continuous monitoring of the operation and ensured greater control of coverage. also with a bold automatic system of supervision, which provided for verification in the field of a sample of selected addresses. The main objective of this supervision was to ensure coverage of the operation, the correct classification of households (occupied or not occupied), in addition to the quality of the filling in the questionnaires”, adds the text.

When disclosing the results of the 2022 Census, the president of the IBGE, Cimar Azeredo, stated that a difference in relation to the estimated population. He recalled that, generally, a population count is carried out in the middle of the decade to avoid this type of lag, which did not occur in 2015. Although it is a simpler operation than the census, the federal government claimed, at the time, that it did not there was resources to finance it. Carrying out a count as early as 2025 has been advocated by both the IBGE and the CNM.

Trend

According to Ricardo Ojima, although the data revealed a considerably smaller population increase than that indicated by previous estimates, they are not surprising. This is because the censuses of previous decades, as well as birth rates, had already been showing a downward trend in the pace of growth.

“Studies of demographic dynamics already announced that at some point, even before the middle of this century, the pace of population growth would stabilize in Brazil, and the country would begin to decline. Perhaps this moment is being anticipated for several reasons. We need to wait for the release of the most complete data from the 2022 Census to understand and evaluate”, he observes.

The researcher does not rule out some influence of health crises on demographic data. The impact that the covid-19 pandemic had on the mortality rate still needs to be better evaluated. Effects on the birth rate may also have occurred, with a possible postponement of the plan to have children by many families. Ricardo Ojima recalls that some studies have already shown a reduction in the birth rate in different states in 2016, during the Zika crisis. The disease, transmitted by mosquito bites Temples of the Egyptianscan lead to the development of microcephaly in the babies of pregnant victims.