1° Quadrimestre

The Federal Guarantees System is one of the cornerstones of the fiscal framework in Brazil. It is designed to ensure the fiscal equilibrium and to provide the legal enforcement upon public entities, federal and subnational ones, regarding their debt formation.

The Brazilian National Treasury is one of the main agents responsible for managing the fiscal policy, searching for efficiency and transparency. As such, it conducts the concession process of federal guarantees, also controlling and executing guarantees and its collaterals.

If any guaranteed credit event arises, the payment becomes an actual responsibility for the National Treasury, just like any other debt issued by the federal government. Thus, the guaranteed debt is a contingent liability for the Treasury. After the guaranteed debt is paid by the federal government, the collateral agreements are triggered in order to recover the amount expended. As such, the Treasury monitors eventual delays from the original debtor perspective, establishing a period for them to remedy their situation, and warning them for the penalties and consequences set forth in the contract terms and in the legislation.

The description above justifies the roll of public debt managers, as far as official guarantees are similar to conventional debt instruments. They are contracts under the civil law, affect the financial position of the government, consume budgetary resources. Typically, contractual loans, associated to their guarantees, hold a cost-risk relationship very close to traditional debt instruments. Therefore, they must be treated as such in the funding strategy.

Hence, as in the Federal Debt Management, it matters to explore the guaranteed debt characteristics, as well as their costs and risks. In that sense, the Guaranteed Debt Report (GDR) presents a series of indicators that detail this debt composition regarding different currencies, indices (linkers), maturities and costs for all guaranteed entities. With that, more transparency can be provided to this contingent liability allowing new analysis regarding Federal Guaranteed Debt.