The Council urges the Brazilian government to adopt and implement the following policy reforms to improve the business climate and drive investment and economic growth in Brazil:
Labor Reform to Generate Jobs
- Secure the effectiveness of the new labor framework, including outsourcing regulation and labor reform.
- Urge outsourcing, allowing entrepreneurs to outsource certain activities based on business models, while protecting outsourced employees’ rights under the law. (Accomplished)
- Support labor reform and outsourcing regulation in the Brazilian Congress. (Accomplished)
Tax Reform to Advance Path to Growth
- Reduce the complexity and cumulative nature of the federal, state, and municipal tax systems to lower compliance costs for enterprises, improving legal certainty.
- Promote efforts to harmonize Brazil’s VAT tax (ICMS)
- Validate ICMS fiscal incentives. (Accomplished)
- Endorse the following pieces of legislation and reforms:
- Tax reform.
- Tax simplification.
- Unification of ICMS.
- Validation of fiscal incentives. (Accomplished)
- Tax substitution regulation.
- Compensation of tax debits with tax and Social Security credits.
- Minimum implementation period for measures that increase costs to corporations.
Trade Facilitation to Improve Trade Flows
- Support the full implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement and programs like the Single Window and the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO).
- Work toward achieving a U.S.-Brazil mutual recognition agreement of AEO and the U.S. Customs Trade Partnership against Terrorism (C-TPAT). Promote the economic benefits associated with expediting bank credit card payment settlements.
- Recommend streamlining Brazil’s bureaucratic procedures, while ensuring a stable and predictable legal and regulatory framework for Brazilian and foreign investors by enacting a law to harmonize the rulemaking process.
- Support Brazil’s accession to the Revised Kyoto Convention urging standardization and harmonization of customs procedures.
Favorable and Predictable Legal Environment to Attract Investments
- Recommend advances on property rights and legal frameworks for regulated markets to ensure legal certainty on foreign investments.
- Recognize the importance of patent protection through both governments’ renewal and expansion of the scope of the Patent Prosecution Highway agreement, signed in 2015, to allow U.S. patent applications before Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) in all technical fields for an unlimited time period.
- Support personal liability of shareholders and directors as an extraordinary measure to secure creditors’ rights with clear legal criteria, implying covenants of good faith and ensuring full defense and fair hearings.
- Recommend regulating foreign acquisition of lands with reasonable limits on the purchase of land that does not
hinder productive operations. - Promote a revision of the agencies’ control and rulemaking process as an important measure toward transparency and improvement of the business environment.
Local Content Requirement Reform to Facilitate Investment
- Urge more flexible local content requirements to accommodate rapid innovation and local supply gaps prevalent in infrastructure, high-tech, IT, and oil & gas industries where the requirements do not align with the fast-paced reality of advanced manufacturing.
Infrastructure Improvements to Reduce Logistics Costs
- Urge revision and unification of rules regarding infrastructure public bidding according to international best practices and dissemination of the new rules to gain investors’ interest. Proactively address these issues:
- Project bidding process prioritization.
- Transparent bidding process promotion.
- Environmental licensing process streamlined.
- Local content requirement flexibility.
- Innovative project financing models.
- Support consultations, adjustments, and approvals of these bills:
- Consolidation of Public Procurement Legislation.
- Adjustment on Reference Price for Biddings.
- Optimization of Environmental Licensing Process.
- Credit Payment Settlement.