21.11.201720:05:00UTC+00BRAZIL: Pension Reform Is Far From Receiving Enough Votes - House Speaker

The Brazilian government is still too far from reaching enough support to pass the pension reform bill in the House of Representatives, said House Speaker Rodrigo Maia.

In an interview with Radio CBN, Maia said that the current situation is due to "all the wear and tear that the bill has been going through in the last few months."

According to him, "there is a long way to 308" - the number of votes needed to get the reform approved.

Maia said there is no way to gauge precisely how many representatives would support the bill and noted that the figure would be "too far from the ideal."

Meanwhile, he said, "there is nothing that we could not solve if we work together with the representatives to explain what would be the impacts of what will be approved."

Maia warned that if the pension reform is not approved later this year, there would be a risk of elaborating the bill in a context of high inflation. In his words, there is "a great risk depending on the applications of the international financial flow, imposing hurdles to the Brazilian debt rollover, including the risk of default shortly."