Brazil may tap a 15.8 billion real ($8.6 billion) sovereign wealth fund next year to help finance spending plans without widening the budget deficit, Planning and Budget Minister Paulo Bernardo said.
Tax collections may lag in an expected economic recovery in 2010 because some companies have ways of postponing taxes on earnings until the following year, Bernardo said in an interview from Brasilia. Tax revenue fell 1.9 percent in the first half of 2009 from a year earlier.
“If tax collection is not as good, we will use the sovereign fund,” Bernardo said. “I don’t think we will need the sovereign wealth fund this year. Next year, we may.”
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration set aside part of last year’s record tax revenue in a wealth fund. The resources are being managed by state-controlled Banco do Brasil SA.