Estimativas mensais da formação bruta de capital fixo pública no Brasil (2002-2010)

Abstract

This article presents new monthly estimates of the gross fixed capital formation of the Brazilian general government for the 2002-2010 years. A significant research effort was made to carry out the estimations. First, the many differences between the concepts of "public investment" (as used in the Brazilian public accounting manuals) and "gross fixed capital formation of the general government" (as used in the United Nations System of National Accounts) were carefully identified, and so were the peculiarities of the Brazilian budget process that distort official estimates of the annual gross fixed capital formation of the Brazilian general government and affect the precision of naive estimates of the same variable in higher frequencies. Second, several procedures were developed to correct or mitigate these problems. Finally, additional information was obtained from 20 out of 26 Brazilian states, the federal district, and tens of (large) municipalities in order to allow us to circumvent the relative scarcity of information on the finances of Brazilian state and local governments.