Temer Said to Agree on Brazil Pension Vote With House Chief

(Bloomberg) -- Brazil President Michel Temer on Wednesday struck a tentative deal with Lower House Speaker Rodrigo Maia to put the administration’s controversial pension bill to vote in early December, prompting local assets to rally.

The government’s proposed bill will be put up for debate in the Chamber of Deputies on Dec. 5 and to a floor vote on Dec. 6 or 7, according to a government official with direct knowledge of the matter. The administration will schedule the vote even though it does not yet have the necessary 308 votes for approval.

Brazil’s currency erased losses to gain against the U.S. dollar, while the benchmark stock exchange gained more than 400 points on news of the agreement.
"If the news is confirmed, setting a date is a strong sign that the government would have enough votes for approval," said Matheus Gallina, a fixed income trader at Quantitas Gestao de Recursos, an asset management company.

The decision comes amid an all-out push to gain support for the bill, which the government argues will help tame debt and consumer prices. Policy makers have held numerous rounds of talks and loosened some of the bill’s key provisions in attempts to assuage lawmaker concerns and guarantee approval. Even so, the bill’s rapporteur has said securing the necessary votes continues to be a difficult task.

Temer and his Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles hosted lower house deputies at a dinner on Wednesday to help garner support for the legislation. The latest version of the bill aims to keep around 60 percent of the 750-800 billion reais of savings envisioned in the original proposal.

In order to become law, constitutional amendments such as the pension bill require backing from three-fifths of lower house lawmakers in two separate floor votes, followed by three-fifths of the Senate in two additional votes. Brazil’s lower house goes into recess just before the year-end holidays in late December.

--With assistance from Aline Oyamada and Marisa Castellani

To contact the reporter on this story: Simone Iglesias in Brasília at spiglesias@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vivianne Rodrigues at vrodrigues3@bloomberg.net, Matthew Malinowski, Raymond Colitt

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