R$ 6 billion. That is the amount the Lula government plans to set aside in the 2027 federal budget to rescue Correios, Brazil's state-owned postal company, which is going through a financial crisis. Spread across the country's population, estimated by statistics agency IBGE at 214.2 million people, the injection works out to about R$ 28 per Brazilian.

The information was confirmed to Folha de S.Paulo by two members of the economic team and by Planning and Budget Minister Bruno Moretti. In an interview with Valor Econômico, Moretti said the "most likely" scenario is to include the full amount in the 2027 budget bill, which the government must send to Congress by the end of August.

The promise to put money into the company did not come out of nowhere. It was demanded by the five banks that lent R$ 12 billion to Correios at the end of last year: Banco do Brasil, Caixa Economica Federal, Bradesco, Itaú and Santander. To close the deal, the Finance Ministry guaranteed the loan and signaled that federal money could go into the company's cash position, and the banks asked for the promise to become a contractual clause.

Understand: the injection is a capitalization, meaning the federal government, which owns Correios, puts its own money into the company to strengthen its finances. So far, the government has not transferred any funds to the company: it only guaranteed the loan, which forces the Treasury to pay the banks if the postal company misses its installments. The contract requires the R$ 6 billion transfer, half the size of the loan, to happen by the end of 2027, but the exact timing is up to the federal government.

"We will religiously fulfill the contractual obligation we have. We will fulfill it within the fiscal rules," Moretti told Folha.

Until last month, the government was still considering forecasting a smaller amount in the budget and raising it over the course of 2027 through additional credits. It also discussed advancing part of the injection to this year. According to Moretti, a transfer still in 2026 is "very difficult", because R$ 17.9 billion is currently blocked in this year's budget to offset the growth of mandatory spending, such as pensions.