The Brazilian Foreign Trade Agenda aims at identifying topics with significant interest for sectors involved in foreign trade operations, in order to favour business environment and promote adequacy to the best global practices. According to the Brazilian Chamber of Foreign Trade, the Agenda is in convergence with practices adopted by OECD member countries and will certainly contribute with the accession process to the organization.
During the last few months, several companies participated with comments and also received replies from the responsible ministerial body.
This month, the final agenda was published , divided into 8 topics, of which we highlight:
Topic 1 – Customs and foreign trade procedures
Ex: Improvement of the ex-tarifário system, to make it faster and efficient, and the implementation of a new import procedure for the Foreign Trade Portal, enabling an integrated system for taxes, charges, and contributions ‘collection.
Topic 2 – Sanitary and Technical Regulations
Ex: review of procedures related to the purchase of reference medication in international territory and technical regulation on nutritional labelling of packaged foods; and new regulation on food additives authorised for use in milk powder and regulation of the use of hormone residues in meat products imported into Brazil.
Topic 3 – Defense products
Ex: new regulation on the National Export Policy for Defense Products.
Topic 4 – Financing and guarantees
Ex: Regulatory Update about Financing and guarantee program of exports (Proex) and restructuring of the export guarantee fund (FGE).
Topic 5 – Trade Remedies
Ex: review of the Brazilian Regulation on safeguards and the application of countervailing measures; expansion of the use of Digital Certificate of Origin for Latin America countries.
Topic 6 – Export Processing Zones
Ex: review of the procedures for the presentation of an industrial project for the installation of Export Processing Zones, inclusion of service sector companies in the EPZs.
Topic 7 – Transport and Logistics
Ex: new regulation to enable an expansion of applications for the Internet of Things (IoT) and M2M communications, and general review and consolidation of various import and export regulations for oil and biofuels.
Topic 8 – Services and Public Procurement
Ex. review of regulation for better definition of services ‘exports; review of lighthouse tariff for foreign ships.
