Brazil to place 800,000 more families under aid program

Brazil to place 800,000 more families under aid program

Brazil will extend a project, which offers financial aid to poor families, to reach 800,000 more families in the next two years, Social Development Minister Tereza Campello said on Monday.

The Bolsa Familia program provides a monthly stipend to families with an income less than 140 reais (78 U.S. dollars) per capita per month.

The amount of money granted to those families is partly fixed and partly variable depending on the number of children in the household. The fund offers aid to at most five children in a family, granting each child with 32 reais (18 dollars) a month.

The minister said that 180,000 families were recently included in the program. With the help of local governments, the program intends to include a total of 320,000 families by the end of this year.

Pregnant and nursing women will also benefit from the program.

The government lowered the threshold to the program, granting immediate entrance for families whose income fell under the program's qualifications again for reasons such as unemployment after they stopped receiving the aid due to income increases.

According to the government, 5 million families have left the program since 2003.

The expansion of the program will add another 728 million reais (411.3 million dollars) to the current program budget of 16 billion reais (9 billion dollars).

Editor: Yamei Wang

English.news.cn   2011-09-20 11:10:52 FeedbackPrintRSS
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 20 (Xinhua)