Brazil’s proposed administrative reforms would save the government about R$300 billion in a decade, according to Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, who also said that the highest-paid federal employees in fact should be paid even more. The efforts to cut down on personnel costs will focus on digitalization of services, not filling all posts when government employees retire, and a system of evaluations to fire or promote people.
Mr. Guedes said too many workers had been hired in recent years – citing a figure of 100,000 people hired by the Education Ministry – and so proposed a reduction through attrition, only replacing 20% of retiring workers at first, and at a later point in time this could rise. Mr. Guedes also criticized as too “socialist” the difference between the highest and lowest-paid employees, saying that there needs to be more inequality in the pay scale, not less.