Brazil’s poor squeezed by less virus aid, surging food costs

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Many people in Brazil are struggling to cope with less pandemic aid from the government and jumping food prices, with millions expected to slip back into poverty.

Brazil’s government, starting this month, halved the amount of its monthly emergency cash transfers to help Brazil’s poor withstand the hardship of the economic meltdown, down to 300 reais ($54).

As the government winds down the program through year-end, with unemployment still high, many of those people who benefited will become newly impoverished, according to Marcelo Neri, director of the social policy center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university and think tank. Half of them are expected to fall into poverty in October alone, he said.

The program, which started in April, has been the main driver behind lifting 15 million people from poverty, including 2 million from July to August, according to a report the university published Friday. Poverty, which the FGV defined as income equal to half a minimum monthly salary, or 523 reais, has reached its lowest level since at least the 1970s, according to Neri, the report's author.

Marcio Santos, 27, used to sell water at traffic lights in Sao Paulo. Nobody wants to buy from him anymore, fearing COVID-19 contamination, so he’s been relying on the government’s pandemic cash program. Receiving 300 reais monthly instead of the 600 reais he collected for months is blowing a hole in his finances.

“For a family that receives aid of 300 reais, how can we take care of our 5 kids with this? There is no way we can buy milk, diapers, food,” he said.

President Jair Bolsonaro told the United Nations General Assembly last month that the pandemic cash program had buoyed the livelihoods of 65 million Brazilians, making it one of the world’s largest such initiatives. Political...