Address by the President of the Republic, Michel Temer, during the Solemnity Ceremony for the Award of the Grand Collar of the Order of Industrial Merit of the CNI
Brasília-DF, 30 October 2018
Well, my friends, I want to start by greeting everyone. And I would also like to express my gratitude to Robson Andrade and to all councillors for the extraordinary kindness they showed in bestowing this honour upon me. And I receive it - and these are not just empty words - with great humility and with great gratitude. And I must say that I want to share this award, this honour, with my colleagues in the Executive and with my friends in the National Congress.
And I say this because, in fact, we, on this two-and-a-half-year journey, had the opportunity to use a keyword in my government, which was the word "dialogue." Dialogue with great serenity, with great tranquillity, naturally facing storms, as the ladies and gentlemen know. But we actually outlived them all. And even though I am not going to make an account here of what we did in our administration, since Marcos Jorge, Senator Eunice and Robson all made detailed accounts of what we produced for the country... It would be repetitive and possibly tiresome if I did so.
I would like to tell some more personal things. Interestingly, when I was a boy, a little boy in Tietê, a small town, my older brother took me to Mass and while there, in the stained-glass windows of the main church, in the small country town - I was seven years old - I soon came across a word that caught my attention: the word was temperance. And I went to my house and opened the dictionary to check what temperance was, and it was balance, moderation, serenity, right?
I even have the impression that this is a religious act, and religion is something that makes you permanently reconnect with people, doesn't it? I have the impression that this was somehow our conduct in the various sectors that I worked in, whether in professional practice as a lawyer, whether as a university professor, whether in public life, in the Chamber of Deputies, in the Vice-Presidency, and now, in the Presidency of the Republic.
And we always knew, me and my team, we always knew how to stay above the events. Because when you get too involved with the events, you end up harming your own performance. And because we stood above traditional trivial events, that was why we succeeded, President Robson, why we achieved absolute unity in our government. It is interesting that there is no divergence and there has never been any divergence of any kind in our administration.
You take, for example, the agribusiness sector, the agriculture sector, and the environment sector. Everything we did, although we practically - or rather not practically, actually - doubled the size of environmental protection areas in our country, there was no divergence with the agriculture sector; on the contrary, agriculture, agribusiness, continues to thrive enormously, without any divergence with the environment area. And so it was in all sectors of our government. And that is the result, precisely, I say again, of the dialogue that we have been able to establish. First of all, of course, by bringing the National Congress closer to us, because in our administration the National Congress was not, as it was in the past, a kind of appendix to the Executive branch. It was, rather, a partner of the government. In other words, we governed together. Senator Eunício, president of the National Congress, is here to bear witness to these words of mine.
We were aware, therefore, that it was necessary, in addition to dialogue, to have two precepts, two words that could guide our steps. One of them was fiscal responsibility. And responsibility, we all know, comes from the verb to "respond." Therefore, those who practice a given governmental act respond for their actions. So fiscal responsibility is what allowed what Robson mentioned, that is, that at first we could establish what is, we must agree, a triviality, something obvious: to start with the idea, the conception, that you cannot spend more than you earn. If you do this in your home, you will, within two, three, four months, have a major financial issue in your home, in your house. Therefore, in the case of Brazil, which is our great home, you cannot spend more than what you raise.
And we did, without going over the spending ceiling issue again... We did something extremely responsible, in that we did not do it through an attitude or a project, or a normative act, that was populist in nature. In fact, we were responsible, so much so that, in the spending ceiling, we predicted a 20-year [validity] period so that, at a given moment, balance could be reached between what you raise and what you spend. And also, optimistically, we allowed for a kind of review 10 years from now. That is, based on the idea that, perhaps, the public deficit will begin to decrease gradually. It was at 179 [billion reais per year], then 159, and now the forecast for next year is 139. So, with the public deficit gradually falling, it is possible that in 10 years we will be able to review this constitutional amendment that established the ceiling on public spending.
And it is curious to note that, interestingly, there was great opposition - was there not, Padilha? Was there not, all my friends? - major opposition to the public spending ceiling. And I understand why our political-administrative culture, especially of those who govern, is that the person wants to spend all they can. And to spend all they can, they take measures of a populist nature. That is, those measures that are practiced today and applauded today, but which will cause harm tomorrow and then be booed.
Differently... Even Robson made a distinction, with the so-called popular measures, which are those that when you take them, you don't receive applause. The applause comes later, by recognition. And the public spending ceiling is just that.
So I want to say that this was done in a way... And it was interesting, because it was called the PEC [Proposed Amendment to the Constitution] of Death, because it would supposedly end... Was it not so, Senator Jucá? Senator Armando Monteiro, Senator Muniz?... It would supposedly end education and healthcare. Education and healthcare would be destroyed because they would not receive funds.
It is interesting that the times denied these predictions, because whoever examines, who checks the budget for [20]17, the budget for [20]18 and now the budget for [20]19, sees that we have increased the budget for education and health care. Therefore, fiscal responsibility meant, first, an exaction, let us say, an absolute decency in dealing with public money. But at the same time, we do not demean the essential factors of our nationality that are education and healthcare.
So when we talk about fiscal responsibility, that is why Robson and Marcos Jorge also mentioned the recovery we made of state-owned enterprises. You remember that Petrobras, three or four years ago, if I may use a quote-unquote here, was almost "a dirty word". And today, it is a company that is once again recognised, due to the various legislative measures that Robson mentioned, which we have taken throughout this administration. Today, it has returned to national and international renown.
The example of Banco do Brasil. Very recently, Caffarelli called me and said: "Look Mr. President, I want to say that when we got here, Banco do Brasil's shares were worth R$ 15, now they're worth R $ 45.00". This means that Banco do Brasil as a public asset, which was worth about [1]35 billion, rose to 125 billion reais. Similarly, just yesterday, Nelson de Souza, from Caixa Econômica, told me: "Look, after many years - because Caixa Econômica's usual profit was of 3.4 billion - this year we will surpass R$ 12 billion in profits at Caixa Econômica Federal". That is, we have recovered, in this area of state-owned enterprises, the credibility of these companies. All this on the topic of fiscal responsibility.
Now, of course, we know and are aware that we are still a country with much poverty. So we adopted another precept, alongside fiscal [responsibility], which was social responsibility. And it is because of social responsibility that we brought the country to the twenty-first century, carrying out the so-called labour modernisation and authorising outsourcing. Because on this, many may say... But did it create jobs or did it not create jobs? And I say, it has been proven to create jobs. So much so that in the year, in August, the CAGED, that special agency of our minister Caio, verified that there was an increase of 110 thousand formal job hires. More recently, in September, 137,500 new formal work contracts signed, and Caio's forecast is that by the end of the year, before the end of the year, we will have more than 1 million new formal job contracts in 2018 alone. And in addition to that, about 2 million jobs. These are small activities, like a food truck, a hairdresser, a popcorn cart, and so on; 2 million new jobs.
So we have this in the social area, not to mention, now, the more extreme poverty, more absolute, which in the case of Bolsa Familia... This is interesting; as soon as we arrived, we found that, for more than two and a half years, no increases had been approved for Bolsa Familia. We soon increased it above inflation, and subsequently gave further rises above inflation.
And it is interesting, dear ministers here present... Since there was a lot of disarray, we conducted a study of those who received the Bolsa Família and it was found that there was a municipal councillor receiving benefits, people with two, three cars that received Bolsa Família benefits. We did a more rigorous calculation, and this calculation led to the exclusion of several million Bolsa Família beneficiaries and the inclusion of more than 800,000 families who were waiting to join the programme. The queue is now cleared, the Bolsa Família queue is cleared. But, as we know, Bolsa Família - still on the topic of social responsibility - is not a definitive inclusion programme, because what you do with it is to give money for people to be able to eat. We have created a programme called Progredir [To Progress], which means the next step, later... And the interaction here, Robson - Robson knows this programme - is interaction with the private sector. Entrepreneurs have begun hiring the children of Bolsa Família beneficiaries, which today has already led to 220,000 formal contracts, which is true social inclusion.
So I'm saying this to convey that these three tenets - dialogue, fiscal responsibility, social responsibility - were the hallmarks of our administration. And I say this with great satisfaction, because, at the same time, we did it, it must be recognised, very serenely, didn't we? We achieved it after four, five months or so, against very radical opposition. Because it is interesting... If I may make an aside here, and I always caution about this... We have, in fact, a political idea of opposition, of government and opposition. We don't take into account the legal concept of government and opposition.
Here, whoever loses the election, their duty - according to our political culture - is to destroy the government, not to cooperate with the government, when, in fact, the role of opposition is fundamental in democracy, because opposition usually oversees, so that government acts often get modified in the face of criticism and oversight. But, in fact, it is necessary to separate acts of government from acts of State. There are acts that are practiced for the future. So it may be that today opposition is opposition, but tomorrow it can turn out to be the government. So in those cases, the opposition has to cooperate with the government. You know that I have lived on both sides, and to my surprise, it is interesting that, when those who were in the government become opposition, the ideals of government become the ideals of opposition and the ideals of opposition become the ideals of government. This is not appropriate in our country, and that is why I take the liberty of making this very brief aside. But I also want to say, and to emphasise, that we only did this because we knew how to aggregate the various sectors of Brazilian nationality.
When we sent the labour reform bill, there was your Vice-President, Robson, who even gave a speech. We reached agreements with the union federations and the business sectors, the result of conversations that initially faced resistance, but which was soon overcome - our Vice-President is in attendance - and soon after it was overcome. And you see that we have had a period of relative tranquillity, but that is because, I am absolutely convinced, the country only grows if it has the collaboration of the private sector. And when I say private sector, I mean, in fact, the productive sectors of the country. On the one hand, the businesses, on the other hand, the workers. That is why this harmony is very important.
So when we achieved this composition, I always said, "This is going to work, it's going to work", and work it did. I just relayed some numbers on job creation, and Marcos Jorge gave you some numbers that I even brought myself, but he stole my words. It was the data regarding [the] Doing Business [ranking] for 2019. It's incredible, but we jumped from 125th to 109th position in very little time. And so we had a huge score gain. Plus 2.96 in the Latin American and Caribbean region. And 12th among the 190 economies evaluated in recent times. The opening of businesses - you see here the phenomenon of de-bureaucratisation - the time to open up a business, which was almost 80 days, fell to 21 days. Practically already in several states. So, these are ways that will improve the relations between government and businesses in general.
So, when we raise these topics, when we discuss these topics, we see... It is interesting, how important it is. How many times Robson, João Henrique, the president of SESI, met with the presidents of federations of the various Brazilian states and brought them to me. I received all the Brazilian states. We would receive the president of the federation, accompanied by six or seven or eight major entrepreneurs in that state, and we had very productive conversations that led to the best results. So I think this... That is why I say one more time, that I want, Rossieli, Caio, Marcos Jorge, Moreira Franco, Ronaldo Fonseca, Carlos Marun... I want, João Martins, Ambassador Jaguaribe, Guilherme Afif... I want to tell everyone that this award should be a shared award.
Here is the president of Fenabrave [National Federation of Automotive Vehicle Distributors], and you saw what we did in the automotive area. The increase in sales in the automotive sector was an extraordinary thing. Throughout our administration. And are we talking about what, a four- or eight-year administration? No. We're talking about a two-year administration, two years and four months now. And to illustrate well, although technically on this matter... I always point out that when we took office in May 2016, GDP was negative at 5.95%. Martini knows that well, doesn't he? He followed all this struggle on Civil Construction.
When we got to December, Romero Jucá, it was already at 3.6, that is, we improved by 3.4, more or less. And the next year, in 2017, GDP was positive at 1%. Therefore, we improved GDP, in a year and a half, by 6.9%. And this year we're still going to have positive GDP at 1.4, 1.6%, and, I would say, if it were not for the truckers' strike, speaking frankly, we might have been at 3.4%. But the country is being recognised internationally, especially here in Latin America. We have expanded enormously - can I talk a little bit more? - on the international plane. For as long as I have an attentive audience, I'll move forward. But in the international sphere, we are making a lot of progress here in Mercosur, aren't we, Jaguaribe? You see, we did not restrict our actions to Mercosur. Because sometimes we receive criticism. We made an alliance... During my presidency of Mercosur, we made an alliance with the Pacific Alliance. We went to Mexico, and while there we formalised a pact, an alliance, as I say, between Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance. Particularly for one fundamental reason: it is in the Constitution that we must practice and seek a public policy of unity of Latin American States. On the foreign front, what we are doing is an attempt at an alliance with the European Union, an alliance with Canada, an alliance with Singapore, an alliance with several States with whom we have had the best relationships.
But all this, my friends, is the result of the enthusiasm of the Brazilian people, that cannot be lost, can it? Many and more times there are those would preach seeking to divide Brazil, divide the people, pit Brazilian against Brazilian. We cannot tolerate this. No, we have to have Brazilians with Brazilians, which is our tradition, isn't it? Solidarity is one of the hallmarks of the Brazilian people. So we must repudiate every attempt to divide the Brazilian people.
That is why I always say - and here I am almost finishing - that we actually have two distinct political moments, don't we? You have, at a given moment, the so-called political-electoral stage, which is what precedes the elections. In it you have controversies, contestations, animosity, sometimes exaggerations. But then, when the election passes, we are precisely at the second moment: it is the political-administrative moment, in which all, without exception, should seek the common good, both those who have won and those who have lost. Because both were noticed; those who lost the election were also the recipient of votes to stay in the opposition, and those who won, to stay in the government.
So, at this stage as we are living the political-administrative moment, we must preach, boast, spread, disseminate, extol, emphasise, the idea that we must have absolute national unity, and preach pacification. Because, we must admit, we have entered a system in which hatreds have become more pronounced, haven't they? Quarrels raged, almost coming to physical confrontation. And we cannot allow this in our country. I think it is important - and the National Confederation of Industry, all federations and the trade unions have the duty - to constantly preach this. Because we are all members of a single team, and this team is called Brazil, is that not so? We are one team, nothing more.
Now, I must admit, Robson, that with this honour bestowed upon me, naturally by the president and the councillors, comes a lot of kindness, almost straight from the heart, because we have built an institutional relationship, first of all, that is very solid. But also, a personal relationship with all members of the federations, a personal relationship that is very prosperous, very solid, very affectionate.
So I think this award came from these various factors, and for this I would like to thank you for the kindness of this honour, and once more to say that it was the best moment, at least in these last few years.
Thank you very much.