Maílson Ferreira da Nóbrega (Cruz do ílsondaNóEspírito Santo, Paraíba, May 14, 1942) is a Brazilian economist. He was Finance minister in José Sarney's administration during a period of hyperinflation in the late 1980s. He is married and has five children.
Career
Nóbrega was an officer of the Bank of Brazil since 1963; he graduated in Economics in 1974 at the "Centro de Ensino Universitário de Brasília" (CEUB). In the late 1970s, he began a career in the Ministry of Finance; after holding several important positions, he was appointed Minister of Finance on January 6, 1988, after the resignation of Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira.
In the Ministry of Finance
Upon taking office, Nóbrega said that he would not neglect inflation control, that there would be no economic package or "heroic measures" and that he would try to renegotiate Brazil's external debt with international creditors on terms as favorable as those obtained by Mexico. However, it quickly became apparent that he would not be able to fulfill any of these promises. On February 2, 1988, the then-Senator Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Congress questioned the resumption of external debt payments since the default of 1987, without a definitive agreement signed with creditors. Finally, on August 23, 1988, Brazil reached an agreement with the IMF, for which it would get an injection of ; of which it has actually received $477 million.
Nóbrega had said that his economic policy would be "rice and beans", without "miracle cures", only making occasional adjustments to prevent hyperinflation. However, 1987 ended with a cumulative inflation rate of 415.87%, and it reached 1037.53% at the end of 1988. It became clear that once again the Sarney administration would have to resort to a "heterodox economic package." This package, which was named Plano Verão ("Summer Plan"), was implemented on January 15, 1989.
Summer Plan
The economic package known as "Summer Plan" was the fourth and last of the Sarney administration, and was primarily aimed at controlling rising inflation in an election year. For this purpose, a new currency, the cruzado novoequivalent to 1,000 old cruzadoswas created. There was a 17% devaluation of the national currency against the United States dollar, and prices and wages were frozen. Like its predecessors, the Summer Plan proved to be an almost complete failure. Maílson da Nóbrega said that its goals were not met, but that other measures that should be adopted for the plan to succeed were not approved by the Brazilian Congress. Among these measures were the dismissal of civil servants without stability, the closure of public agencies and an extensive program of privatization. These measures were taken later in the neoliberal governments of Fernando Collor de Mello and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, although they have not proven particularly effective in reducing the public deficit.
Apart from its ineffectualness as a tool to control inflation, it is alleged that the Summer Plan and related "Bresser Plan", 1987, "Collor Plan 1", 1990 and "Collor 2", 1991 caused losses to those with savings accounts, as the inflation adjustment indices were altered. For the Summer Plan, the losses are estimated at 20.37% of revenues in February 1989. However, the National Confederation of Brazilian Financial System challenges the idea that savers were negatively affected, but says that financial institutions did not receive the money not credited to customers' accounts, since the excess liquidity is compulsorily collected by the Central Bank of Brazil. , it is expected that the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) will evaluate the case and establish whether there were losses and who will pay for them.
Consultancy
In 1989, Brazil's hyperinflation reached the historic milestone of 1782.85%. In March 1990, the elected president, Fernando Collor de Mello, took the oath for the new Finance minister, Zélia Cardoso de Mello. Shortly after leaving office, Maílson da Nóbrega moved to São Paulo, where he began almost immediately to work as a financial consultant. With Claudio Adilson Gonçalezhis former subordinateand Celso Luiz Martone, he formed the "MCM Consultores Associados", to which he belonged until 1995.