The Ministry of Municipality and Environment proposes a budget of R$2.6 billion for Luz para Todos in 2026, a reduction of 33% | Brazil

The National Program for Universal Access and Use of Electrical Energy, Luz para Todos, created in 2003, aims to provide electricity services to rural populations and populations residing in remote areas of the legal Amazon who do not have access to public electricity distribution services.

The program is financed from the Energy Development Account (CDE), a sectoral fund used to finance public policies, in addition to support for some sectors, such as distributed generation and catalytic sources. A public consultation on the total budget of the CDE for the year 2026 is scheduled to open on the agenda of the meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel) next Tuesday 9.

The budget reduction, as explained by the Ministry in a technical note, reflects the continuation of the implementation phase and the conclusion of contracts signed and scheduled for 2026. This is because a large portion of the contracts signed this year have already received initial payments for mobilization and acquisition of equipment, equivalent to 50% of the total value of the contracts, in accordance with the established principles.

According to what government sources reported valueThe program’s budget for next year will be larger and will not be limited to the amount expected in the public consultation, part of which has been previously approved and contracts for which have already been signed. In this way, the amount of R$2.6 billion now proposed will add to the approximately R$3 billion already being implemented, for a total of approximately R$5.6 billion.

He pointed out that “the decrease in the total value of the budget is mainly due to the fact that a significant portion of the contracts signed in 2025 have already received initial installments for the mobilization and acquisition of equipment, equivalent to 50% of the total value of the contracts, according to the rules stipulated in the Operations Manual of the Luz para Todos programme. Therefore, the 2026 budget focuses mainly on the intermediate and final installments, related to the material progress and completion of work in progress.” the government.

In the document, the government highlights that although the total CDE budget allocated to the Light for All program in 2026 will be less than in 2025, the physical volume of the service will be increased, due to the maturity of contracts signed in the previous cycle. This stage is characterized by greater material progress in work and the resulting increase in the implementation of agreed upon goals, which reflects positively on the rate of public service universalization.

The target set for the fiscal year 2026 is 124,744 consumer units that will be served by the public electricity distribution service, which represents an increase of 28% compared to the target of 97,112 consumer units in the previous fiscal year.

The implementation of the 2026 budget also includes the financial disbursement linked to new contracts signed within the scope of the exceptional objectives of the Luz para Todos Program established by Decree No. 11628 of August 4, 2023, in particular in the states of Bahia, Ceará, Goiás, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, Paraíba, Pará, Piauí, Rio de Janeiro and Tocantins.

“These exceptional goals aim to serve vulnerable communities located in municipalities that Anel has already considered universal, and to contribute to the fight against energy poverty and reduce regional inequality,” the government explained.