Ten days before the deadline, the government has still not paid 10% of the minimum value of amendments planned for the 1st semester

Ten days before the deadline established in the Budget Guidelines Law (LDO), the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) has still not paid 10% of the minimum volume of amendments planned for the first semester. 🔎 The calendar approved in the LDO provides for the payment in the first semester of 65% of individual and caucus amendments to health funds, social assistance, and special transfers, which can be applied for any purpose. The government still needs to transfer one-third of the amount planned for amendments made by special transfers — the so-called PIX amendments.

💰 As of June 18, the federal government paid R$ 15.8 billion of the total R$ 17.3 billion planned for these actions. Of this total, the Executive settled R$ 12.3 billion in health amendments and R$ 583.1 million in social assistance, which represents the total for these areas.

Regarding special transfer amendments, known as PIX amendments, the government paid R$ 2.8 billion, which corresponds to 63% of the mandatory resources in this modality. By the end of the month, however, the Executive still needs to settle R$ 1.6 billion, 37% of the total.

Now on g1 Of the pending amount, R$ 109 million had their work plans rejected by the government due to some defect in the indication, and R$ 530 million are in the process of approval. 🔎 PIX amendments were created in 2019 and became known as such due to the difficulty in supervising the resources, since the values were transferred by parliamentarians directly to states or municipalities without the need to present a project, agreement, or justification.

The modality was even blocked by a decision of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) minister, Flávio Dino, in 2024. After an agreement between the Three Powers in February 2025, Congress approved a supplementary bill requiring a work plan for PIX amendments.

Electoral pre-campaign For Eduardo Grin, political scientist and professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), the amendment calendar creates an imbalance in the 2026 elections. "The impact is direct because a deputy who receives more amendments has a better chance of reelection. We are consolidating, in quotes, a caste in Congress, a privileged one. This makes political competition unequal. Those who do not have the same resources have less chance of winning an election, especially new candidates who do not hold office," he pointed out. He also argues that the sending of funds by parliamentarians to their electoral strongholds, in practice, anticipates the campaign for these politicians and that this was the goal of Congress when approving the amendment payment calendar. "The deputy makes an agreement with the mayor to say 'it was our deputy, our congresswoman who brought resources to the city'. In other words, I have a chance to have much greater public exposure, I have a chance to have my name associated with an achievement made for the city," he stated. "It is clear that this has an impact on the elections. This new rule that the parliamentarians approved, forcing the government to commit all amendments by June, was designed precisely to have this electoral effect," he concluded.

For Guilherme France, research and advocacy manager at Transparency International Brazil, this imposition of amendments also created a new problem in public accounts by bringing an imbalance in execution, forcing the government to contingency accounts such as education expenses to pay for the amendments. “When you lose this flexibility of execution, generating a difficulty also to keep the accounts balanced and, in the end, what we have seen is that with the calendar for payment of amendments there is no flexibility in payment and other areas end up suffering,” he said.

In addition, France also points out that because the amendments are increasing more and more and taking up more space in the federal government's budget, they have changed their characteristics, ceasing to have an investment character and becoming the funding of public activities, such as the payment of salaries. “In Health, we see resources going more and more to funding and not to investment. Which inverts the logic of public spending on amendments, because the amendments are not necessarily continuous. So, it doesn't mean that next year there will be the same amendment that there was this year, which ends up generating this public management problem. We are investing one year without knowing if there will be resources the following year,” he concluded. Study shows low relevance and transparency of individual parliamentary amendments Jornal Nacional/ Reproduction Total paid Until last Thursday, the government paid a total of R$ 18.4 billion in parliamentary amendments. Of this amount, R$ 10.9 billion went to indications made by federal deputies. Another R$ 4.2 billion went to senators and R$ 3.2 billion were amendments defined by state caucuses. Thus, the government paid R$ 2.6 billion more than what was defined as mandatory for this 1st semester of 2026. Most of this amount went to amendments intended for the funding of services related to Primary Health Care, R$ 1.9 billion. The rest was paid for other public actions, such as promoting culture, promoting tourism, and the agricultural sector.