Brazil is one of the countries with the highest number of amendments to the executive budget compared to OECD member countries. In 2024, for example, the changes represented 0.45% of Brazilian GDP, while in the United States and Italy this value was only 0.05%, and in Mexico it was less than 0.3%. In several countries, such as Canada, Australia and Chile, parliamentary amendments are not even allowed or require compensation for approval.
The amounts allocated through so-called individual amendments increased from 9 billion reais in 2022 to 20 billion reais in 2024, despite a low level of transparency regarding their allocation and execution.
In addition to the urgency of greater transparency in the allocation of these resources, it is essential to assess whether they are effectively converted into effective public policies. The approval of Constitutional Amendment 95/2016, which established the spending ceiling, reduced the discretionary spending of the Ministry of Education (MEC) by 35%.
As a result, universities, federal institutes and basic education networks began to rely more and more on parliamentary amendments (MPs) to finance their work and operating expenses. However, in practice, this significant growth in spending via amendments has not translated into investments with a real capacity to generate social impact.
Between 2014 and 2023, resources allocated to education through parliamentary amendments increased by 385% in real terms, from 360 million reais to 1.75 billion reais (Ipea, 2025). Despite this significant increase, in 2023, only 14% of these resources were directed towards basic education. An increase which has not necessarily translated into effective educational policies.
In the context of basic education, there is a deep gap between the amounts committed (reserved in the Budget) and the amounts actually paid (made by the National Treasury). Over the past ten years, of the 120.4 billion reais committed via amendments, only 10 billion reais have been paid, resulting in an extremely low execution rate of only 8.3%.
Analysis of the financial execution of the amendments by type of action also reveals large disparities in the basic education budget. The actions with the best execution rates are concentrated in social education provided by military schools, which records a rate of 86.25%. On the other hand, actions targeting infrastructure, the acquisition of vehicles and information technologies have much lower execution rates, that is to say that the amounts are committed, but do not leave the public coffers for their destination.
In general, the structural precariousness of Brazilian schools remains alarming. Nationally, less than half of establishments have a library or reading room (48.3%), only 10% have a scientific laboratory and just over a third have a sports field (36.2%). This reality is even more critical in the North and Northeast regions.
Such data help explain the high concentration of public resources in current expenditures, such as salaries and consumables, which averaged 93.7% of education spending over the past decade. Only 6.3% was allocated to capital expenditure, which concerns investments in infrastructure, construction and the acquisition of equipment.
When implementing an econometric model, “differences in differences (Dif-in-Dif)”, a technique that allows comparing the trajectories of municipalities that received resources from parliamentary amendments with those that did not, before and after the transfers, no solid evidence was found that the amendments promote significant improvements in the quality of basic education, as measured by Ideb.
As long as transfers resulting from parliamentary amendments continue to be used as a tool for political negotiation or a simple instrument for electoral gains, it is unlikely that there will be concrete progress in priority areas such as education, an essential sector for the development of a more just and equitable society.
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