//REPEATING////SOCIAL SUMMIT 2000//DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: Economy Hinders Social Progress

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 2000 (IPS) - Are globalisation and international financial crises or government economic polices to be blamed for the under-performance of Brazil’s social indicators over the last five years?

The government says the former, but non governmental organisations (NGOs) say domestic policies more than anything else limited the country’s development at the end of the last century

Government officials say economic globalisation and international financial crises caused unemployment to rise and maintained the country’s extreme income inequalities because these external processes forced the restructuring of Brazil’s productive sectors, thus preventing greater growth.

NGO leaders maintain, however, that the government’s economic policies deepened inequalities and unemployment, Brazil’s two principal social problems.

The NGO diagnosis has been presented to the committee entrusted with preparing Brazil’s report to the United Nations Special Session to be held in Geneva Jun. 26 to 30. There world leaders will assess progress made on the goals set at the World Social Summit in 1995.

The official name of the conference, also known as Copenhagen Plus Five, is “The World Summit for Social Development and Beyond: Achieving Social Development for All in a Globalised World.”

Vilmar Faria, a special adviser to the Brazilian Presidency and co-ordinator of the social development report, pointed out that many of the country’s social indicators improved over the last five years and are at their best levels ever, despite a range of adverse conditions.

Among the positive indicators are reduced infant mortality and increased school attendance, literacy, average family incomes and consumption of basic products.

The last years have seen primary school education reach near complete coverage, with 96 percent of Brazil’s children ages seven to 14 attending school.

Secondary education expanded 57 percent from 1994 to 1999, and there was a 28 percent increase in higher education from 1994 to 1998, according to Ministry of Education data.

The social statistics also show a positive performance in the fight against child labour.

NGOs recognise the improvement of health and education indicators as “a sign of hope,” along with a national professional training plan that provides classes for millions of workers, and credits earmarked for small and micro-businesses as an employment-generating resource.

Millions of families from rural areas and others who live in extreme poverty were the beneficiaries of a special programme that ensures a minimum family income and funding for children so that they may attend school instead of working, stressed Faria.

In the first years of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s term in office (elected in 1994), the reduction of rampant inflation – which had torn away at the national economy for decades – allowed an estimated 10 million Brazilians to escape poverty by halting the deteriorating purchasing power of their already low incomes, he said.

“Economic stability and fiscal austerity are necessary conditions, though insufficient by themselves, for promoting social development,” Faria added.

The first of the commitments made in the Copenhagen Declaration five years ago was to create an economic environment favourable for social development.

Globalisation and foreign economic crises impeded the creation of full employment and the eradication of extreme poverty – two goals set by the 186 countries that signed the Declaration in 1995, said Virginia Toniati, a diplomat and secretary for the committee preparing Brazil’s social development report.

But NGO leaders argue that the principal obstacle in the way of greater progress in development is the fact that the Brazilian government places the economy above social policies.

The government’s economic policy priority is the adjustment required in order to pay the public debt, which results in social exclusion and unemployment, and maintains the concentration of wealth, says Atila Roque, head of the international division of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis.

“Nothing is more stable in this country than social inequality,” affirmed Roque, who is also a member of Social Watch, an international network of NGOs that assess the progress made on the goals set in Copenhagen and at the Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing – also held in 1995.

When it comes to distributing public resources, government expenditures are not in line with social objectives, and the implementation of programmes does not correspond to people’s needs, according to Iara Pietricovsky, director of the Brasilia-based Institute of Socio-Economic Studies, which monitors the Brazilian government’s budgets.

The government was unable to “come up with a solution to the problems by uniting economic measures with social development,” or through the redistribution of income through tax measures or a more thorough agrarian reform, commented Amelia Cohn, president of the Centre for Contemporary Culture Studies, in Sao Paulo.

Education and social assistance policies are unsustainable because they are compensatory and are divorced from the general economic policy, she added.

One example of this contradiction is that the government’s agrarian reform plan resettled some 400,000 families, according to official data, while thousands more were pushed out of rural areas by an increasingly concentrated agricultural economy, Cohn explained.

NGOs specialised in social and economic issues – generally allied with the political opposition – agree such factors ensure that social inequality continues to be the major obstacle for social development in Brazil, while the government argues that the legacy of the past cannot be overcome in just a few years.

//REPEATING////SOCIAL SUMMIT 2000//DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: Economy Hinders Social Progress

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 2000 (IPS) - Are globalisation and international financial crises or government economic polices to be blamed for the under-performance of Brazil’s social indicators over the last five years?
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