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Strategies & Market Trends : Telebras (TBH) & Brazil -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mayer Tchelebon who wrote (1350)	3/30/1998 1:38:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 22640

BRAZIL CONGRESS WEEK-Key votes seen delayed again Reuters, Monday, March 30, 1998 at 13:09 By William Schomberg BRASILIA, March 30 (Reuters) - The Brazilian government will try yet again to hold long-delayed votes on amendments to its crucial social security reform bill this week, but a congressional official said he did not expect much progress. Senior party officials were too busy haggling over posts in an ongoing reshuffle of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's cabinet, said the official, who asked not to be named. "Amendments are not easy, they require cross-party agreement," he said. "It's not looking likely this week." The Chamber of Deputies approved the social security reform bill in a first full vote in January. That was during an extraordinary session of Congress called to make progress on fiscal reforms and show foreign investors that Brazil was reacting to Asia's financial crisis. Since then, the government has defeated about 20 proposed minor alterations to the text of the social security reform bill. But amendments which threaten the spirit of the reform have not been put to a vote, as the government lacks the three-fifths majorities needed to kill them off. One of those amendments would do away with the introduction of minimum retirement ages. Another would allow civil servants to carry on retiring on pensions as high as their salaries. Last week, the lawmaker in charge of the bill in the Chamber of Deputies told Reuters he feared the amendment voting would drag on beyond the Easter holidays. Only once all the amendments have been voted can the government press ahead with a second and final full vote on the reform bill. Even then, there will be another -- but smaller round of voting on amendments. The social security reform bill is considered Brazil's only means of stemming a growing deficit in the public pensions system set to pass $5 billion this year. Despite its importance, the reform has been overshadowed by rampant speculation about Cardoso's cabinet reshuffle. The president has already appointed his friend and influential senator Jose Serra as health minister after the widely criticized Carlos Albuquerque resigned. Foreign Ministry trade negotiator Jose Botafogo Goncalves was then named as a replacement for Industry and Commerce Minister Francisco Dornelles who is standing down to run for Congress in October's general elections. Ministers who intend to run must resign by April 4 and several members of the cabinet have said they will do just that, sparking squabbles among the several parties who support Cardoso over seats in his cabinet. There were also likely to be further distractions from the reform votes this week in Congress as committees mulled the possible expulsion of lawmakers involved in recent scandals. Sergio Naya, a construction mogul whose luxury apartment block collapsed in February killing eight people, faced a key panel vote on his political future. Naya serves as a deputy. Another committee was due to hear the defence of a further two members of the lower house, one of whom is accused of casting the other's vote in Brasilia, despite the latter being in a faraway southern state at the time. william.schomberg@reuters.com)) Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service