Brazilian Bulletin/Volume 19/Number 425/Text of President Goulart՚s New Year՚s Message

by João Goulart

Text of President Goulart՚s New Year՚s Message

 

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Text of President João Goulart՚s New Year Message to the Brazilian people, in a speech presented December 31 at the Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro. (Translation is unofficial.)

 

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Fellow Brazilians:

The birth of a New Year has always signified for us the dawning of new hopes.

I want to share your joys as well as your yearnings and expectations, and to bring to you the expression of my trust in the destinies of Brazil. I am aware of the difficulties which we are undergoing. Nothing, however, justifies discouragement or pessimism. We have already overcome moments of greater trouble; the real fact is that we live in a country posessing exceptional conditions for growth, which has proved capable of resisting grave crises, and despite them has been able to score successive gains in the economic field, in the cultural field and in the social field, and, above all, has done so while continuing to preserve its democratic institutions.

A Nation Shaped by Its People

The Brazilian people have already performed great and admirable tasks towards shaping their destinies. The integration of our immense territory, where we have built a new civilization, founded on the values of our Christian heritage, with unity of faith, of language and of sentiments reflecting the image of the Homeland, one and indivisible; the outstanding work achieved in winning and ruling over the physical realm, where we have established agriculture and industry, built roads and raised up cities; the genius of the Brazilian people, receptive to the changes and transformations required for the development of the country—all this has re-tempered our faith and confidence in Brazil՚s future.

The year 1963, with the sovereign pronouncement of the people at the ballot box, will mark the end of the constitutional crisis unleashed by the occurrences of August 1961.

No Fear of New Burdens

I have no fear of new burdens, however heavy they might be. I accept them, rather, as a duty towards the Brazilian people. I do not fear them because I know that I shall count upon the understanding and support of all Brazilians of good will, who are the overwhelming majority throughout the Nation, as well as upon the patriotic collaboration of the Congress and the Judiciary Power, within the harmonious and independent limits of their constitutional attributions.

My message—I repeat—is one of confidence in Brazil. We rely on concrete possibilities to put in order the national economy and improve the living conditions of our people. We have at our disposal the essential factors to enable Brazilians to increase the national wealth and distribute it in a more equitable manner.

Post-War Efforts

The effort put forth by the nation in the period following the Second World War has been a really extraordinary one. We have set up a large basic industrial plant, expanded the sources of energy, and built a network of roads and highways which serve the national territory and transform the land from a simple geographical possession into an economic asset. The gross national product achieved the high rate of growth of seven per cent yearly, an index that is comparable only to that of the phase of recovery of the large powers under their post-war effort. We are no longer an underdeveloped nation. We have reached the take-off stage of development.

While the actual data shown by present-day Brazil are of a nature to inspire this confidence in our future, I cannot and do not wish to ignore the fact that the people during the last few years have paid a high price to maintain the pace of national development. It is the people who have borne the burden of the effects of the inflationary process; the wage-earners. compelled to keep their domestic budgets within the narrow limits of a fixed income, are the ones who have undergone the greater hardship in these times of economic and financial difficulty. The fundamental concern of the Government henceforth will be the progressive containment of the inflationary process, until its reduction is secured at rates compatible with the preservation of security and the acceleration of development.

Causes of Inflation

To the present situation, almost everyone has contributed by distorting activities that promote and accelerate inflation. The Union itself contributes towards this effect by multiplying expenditures and investments, including assistance to state budgets with their ever-growing deficits, for the coverage of which no way is found available other than that of issuing paper currency. The producing classes also help to aggravate the situation by increasing prices in order to guard against the future raising of costs, or by investing reserves without applying selective criteria. Furthermore, to a minor degree, the inflationary process is also promoted by unfair wage demands that become a new source of difficulties for the people when they are incorporated into costs and price raises.

By analyzing our experiences of the past, it has been possible to identify mistakes so they cannot and should not be repeated. The Government plan that has just been drafted, and which we are now committed to execute, is based on an accurate compilation of the public budget for each fiscal year during the next three years. Due regard was taken not only to revenue from taxation but also to the availability of financing by the State and the proper channeling of popular savings. At the same time, the goals to be attained in all basic sectors of the economy were defined with a view to ensure a seven-per-cent yearly rate of growth of gross national product through maintenance of the present rate of investment.

To Preserve Private Investments

The participation of private initiative in the total investments of the country will be preserved, to which end the Government will utilize its financing capacity and spread it so as to include, among targets, that of facilitating sales of the products of our basic industries. The most important aspect of this programming lies in the fact that the Government will proceed in an informed and coordinated form in all its plans for economic action, with full utilization of the potentialities of national production and the avoidance of inflationary distortions. Besides this, the total limits of disbursements, cost expenditure and financing of the public administration until 1965 will be strictly maintained.

Inflationary Controls

All this effort for planned action will allow the Brazilian Government to estimate and set the limit for currency issues and thereby control and reduce inflation. The inflation rate should fall substantially without detriment to the utilization of the country՚s productive capacity.

The investments planned for the over-all economy during the next three years are of the nature of three and one half trillion cruzeiros, at 1962 prices. These investments will permit a raise in the per capita income. During that period, agricultural production will increase by approximately 20 per cent, and I state with assurance that support and stimulation by the Government will not be lacking. The expected growth of industrial production will exceed 37 per cent, or upwards of 12 per cent yearly. At the end of my term, industry will be contributing upwards of 70 per cent of the capital goods needed by the national economy to maintain its high rate of growth. Steel production will be almost double. Tractor, automobile and truck production will be about double the present production of this very successful domestic industry. The installed electric power generating capacity, so fundamental to our development, will grow from the 4.5 million kilowatts reported in 1961 to a minimum of 7.5 million in 1965.

In order to consolidate and broaden the prospects of these results, in terms of interest to the nation, basic reforms will become necessary in the administrative. economic and social structures of the country. The achievement of these reforms must not be improvised, because as it will be debated among all classes, it must reflect the will of the various national groups, not excluding the preliminary truth that the final beneficiary of development will be the people themselves.

Besides these measures, we will always take into account the human factor with the National Plan for Education and Health, which will afford all Brazilians access to the sources of education and culture, under physical conditions that will permit them to increase the national wealth and obtain greater participation in its benefits.

These are the measures we intend to take in the coming year to reorganize the nation՚s life. moving steadily toward its social and economic stabilization and, as a consequence, toward a betterment that has become imperative and urgent.

Foreign Capital Welcomed

To attain such a lofty goal. above all through our efforts and through the application of our already considerable internal resources, we shall gladly welcome. encourage and guarantee both the capital and the know-how coming from abroad with the sincere purpose of participating in our effort for the development of this country.

The Administration՚s plan will be well divulged so that all citizens may contribute with suggestions and eriticisms, through their class representatives and managerial organizations, towards the improvement of such proposed measures and steps as may turn it into an appropriate instrument for the solution of the problems that cause concern to the country.

It is absolutely necessary that the people be fully informed of the goals we want to reach within the next three years, for this is the only way to turn the goals into a vital, invincible force for the people՚s own good.

Fellow Brazilians, as an independent nation that is fully aware of its sovereignty, and faithful to its tradition of fighting for the preservation of peace, for the intangibility of the self-determination of peoples and for respect to the rules of international coexistence that form the basis of the principles which constitute its best historical inheritance, Brazil has a foreign policy that reflects above all the profound democratic feeling and the legitimate aspirations for economic development of its people.

No one can doubt our loyalty to such ideals and to the commitments we have accepted of our own accord. I am fully convinced

that such values will prevail and be strengthened through the practice of democracy so as to serve not only our love of freedom, but also the aims of social justice and international understanding. Our domestic difficulties are perfectly curable. We have the right to affirm that we should rely on our vitality and to expect that the countries with which we entertain relations recognize our true possibilities.

 

Making the Program a Reality

Fellow Brazilians, if we proved to be capable, as we did without ever resorting to violence or to exceptional measures, of resisting and overcoming crises such as those which marked the final months of 1961 and the year 1962 and which were further aggravated at one by an overwhelming threat to world peace—if we proved capable, despite a sequence of institutional crisis, of conducting elections featured by freedom and by respect of the people՚s will, and further, of working out an objective program to face the difficulties which confronted us—then we can affirm, as I now do, that we will be capable also of turning into reality the work program which has been set up for the next three years.

 

Reasons for Optimism

We have sound reasons for optimism. As the greatest nation on the Latin American Continent, Brazil possesses economic strength and wealth which must be dynamized for the benefit of all. A people that has faced and overcome so many difficulties; a people that has known how to ensure, by its patriotic vigilance, the survival of the legal postulates; a people that has endured with unwavering steadfastness the hardships imposed by the contingencies of supply; a people that can rely on the uncompromising loyalty of its armed forces, ever vigilant for the defense of the national interests; a people, thus, that will not retreat nor despair is unbeatable and can await proudly and with well-justified confidence the coming of a new dawn of peace, order, prosperity and social justice.

To all my fellow Brazilians, in business and in industry, workers in the fields and in the cities, and to your families at home, my best wishes for all happiness in the coming year. Let us strive together to answer the call to duty which is the grand challenge of our country՚s destinies.

Let us join our efforts in friendship and brotherhood, praying God to inspire us in the work for prosperity, for the peace of the Brazilian family and for the future of Brazil in all its grandeur,