Following the announcement of the second stage of the infrastructure concessions program, the government is now discussing changes in cabotage navigation, also with the aim of reducing logistical costs in the country.
This is the transport of cargo by sea from port to port within the country itself. The Minister of Agriculture, Kátia Abreu, worked for the measures to be announced along with the package, which ended up not happening.
The theme, however, was not abandoned. There are, at the moment, two fronts of discussion within the government to encourage cabotage: one in the Ministry of Agriculture itself, and another in the Secretariat of Ports, together with the World Bank, also coordinated with the ministries of Transport, Planning, Finance and Navy.
The tendency is for them to end up converging as the proposals mature.
The problem is that many of the proposals have an impact on public finances, mainly in the form of tax cuts.
And, at a time when the economic area is discussing the deepening of the fiscal adjustment, there are few chances of success for proposals that go in the opposite direction. Discussions have not yet reached the point of evaluating, with the economic area, what is or is not feasible in the short term.
The work of the Secretariat of Ports, to which the newspaper “O Estado de S. Paulo” had access, lists 31 barriers that impede the development of cabotage navigation in Brazil and proposes measures in four “strategic lines”. Number 4, which lists incentives for the use of this type of transport, proposes a 70% reduction in the Corporate Income Tax (IRPJ) and employer contribution to the National Institute of Social Security (INSS). It also suggests that there be “advantageous tax conditions for companies for cargo handled through cabotage services”.
As a whole, the work also proposes facilitating the use of resources collected through the Additional to Freight for Renovation of the Merchant Marine (AFRMM), a federal tax.
Companies could, for example, use the resources to settle debts with the INSS. At the Ministry of Agriculture, the current proposal is to eliminate the collection of this tax on cabotage.
There are also proposals with an impact on state coffers. The group suggests the elimination of charging the Tax on the Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS) on fuel used in cabotage, equaling the conditions of local carriers to those that take cargo to other countries, in the so-called long-haul navigation.
Not all changes create costs for public coffers. In Agriculture and Ports, one of the obstacles mentioned is bureaucracy. Cargo inspection is identical, whether domestic or imported. The adoption of simpler rules for national loads is discussed. The information is from the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.
By: Lu Aiko Otta
Source: Exam
