New Folha Ranking Shows That Only 24% of Brazilian Cities Are Efficient
08/29/2016
FERNANDO CANZIAN
FROM SÃO PAULO
A new tool launched by Folha along with Datafolha in this election year shows which Brazilian City Halls deliver the most basic services to the people using the least amount of financial resources.
The Municipal Efficiency Ranking - Folha (REM-F) includes indicators such as health care, education and sanitation to calculate management efficiency and contains the data of 5,281 cities - 95% of the country’s total 5,569.
In a 0-1 scale, only 24% of the cities assessed are over 0.50, and therefore, can be considered efficient.
The survey also shows that in the 5% least efficient cities, which scored up to 0.30, the number of public employees grew on average 67% between 2004 and 2014. The number of people increased by 12% in the period.
The ranking reflects some of the results of the current dynamics of the Brazilian economy: rising public expenditure, an excessive number of public employees, declining participation of the industry and the growth of promising regions such as the Northeast and areas like agribusiness.
Seen from above, the city of Cachoeira da Prata (MG), the number one in the ranking, is a ring of houses surrounding a once-robust textile factory which is now closed.
Mayor Murcio José Silva (PP) cried while showing the abandoned warehouses where he began to work at the age of 12 and once employed 30% of the city’s population.
With no other source of income, the City Hall now depends almost exclusively on the so-called Municipal Participation Fund (FPM) and other public income to keep its two schools open, manage a Health Care Basic Unit and pay for the construction of a new child care center.
That is the same situation of most of the 5,281 City Halls assessed by the REM-F (95% of the country’s 5.569 cities): 72% (3,777) depend on these funds for more than 80% of their income.
www1.folha.uol.com.br
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