Sérgio Santos, in statements to the press at the end of the meeting of the Economic Commission of the Council of Ministers, said that the effects of the second agricultural season last year also influenced the review.
"We reviewed the executive macroeconomic programming and aligned the economic growth target with the OGE [General State Budget]. We are expecting to get out of this year's economic recession and go into a period of stagnation", said Sérgio Santos.
The official said that active policies are being adopted, mainly in the oil sector, which has a very large weight in the volume of national production.
"We are working with the private sector to increase production and that is why our expectation, if we reach stagnation will be very positive", said Sérgio Santos, in statements issued by public radio.
The Minister of Economy and Planning stressed that inflation, whose rate reached 24.2 percent in the first quarter, continues to generate general price growth, with economic growth "the definitive way to increase the volume of goods and services available in the Marketplace".
"And that is what we want to know with the measures that we are taking in order to increase credit to the economy and very soon we will have the food security reserve acting in the market for the stabilization of prices", he stressed.
The government official guaranteed that there are, in relation to purchasing power and the control of inflation, specific programs and targets, "to reverse the inflation trend that exists in the short term".
"We want to believe that the non-oil sector will continue to grow with great dynamism, therefore, [for] the oil sector, which is suffering from the effects of the pandemic, what is expected in the coming quarters is that production will recover and reach 1.2 million barrels / day. Until March it was 1,132 million barrels / day ", he said.
"If we recover, with the fact that the price of oil is also rising, it is now at 69 [dollars per barrel], we could perfectly achieve stagnation or even growth," he predicted.
Sérgio Santos stressed that economists estimate growth of 1 percent. "Perhaps they are pointing to the success of all these measures," he said, but the Government prefers to be moderate.
"And we think that, at the very least, we are going to have stagnation, unless there is another extraordinary effect and put us back in a state of recession," he added.
