
Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will negotiate in the coming weeks an increase in 2023 government spending that could exceed 200 billion reais ($39 billion), said his former Finance Minister and close aide Guido Mantega.
In an interview with Reuters, he said the first task of the new government taking over from right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro on Jan. 1 will be revisiting a 2023 budget proposal that he described as "fiction."