RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles said on Tuesday that the country's social security reform would be voted by the end of the year.
Meirelles said the changes of the bill had almost been done and the bill would be submitted to vote in the House before the congressional recess.
The social security reform bill is a constitutional amendment proposal that requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate to be approved.
Brazilian President Michel Temer's government managed to approve some controversial bills in the past year, but the social security reform has been considered the administration's toughest sell so far.
This controversial reform faced criticism even inside Temer's congressional coalition.
While the government said the reform would help tackle a huge deficit in the social security system, ensuring the next generations able to collect their retirement pensions, the opposition held that the calculations showing a deficit in the system were fraudulent.
They said Temer was fabricating a deficit that simply does not exist in order to approve the reform which will make citizens work longer and have lower pensions.
The reform bill will not be the original one since Meirelles did not deny weeks ago that a simpler version of the reform was a possibility. It remains unclear, however, how much the original bill will be preserved in the congressional vote.
