Source: Intelog (Porto Alegre / RS) - 25/07/2010

The situation of the informal economy is really worrying, as it generates something close to R $ 600 billion and an estimate by André Franco Montoro Fillho, executive president of the Brazilian Institute of Ethics in Competition (Etco), indicates that tax evasion in this segment is around 200 billion a year.

This value ends up being worth highlighting if we consider that the federal government's annual investments are close to R $ 30 billion.

The percentage participation of this sector outside the official ranking in relation to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is 18,3%. There was a slight decrease in the comparison with this slice in the GDP of 2003, when that number was 21%.

The indices were raised by the Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (Ibre-FGV), under the order of the Etco Institute. For professor Fernando Holanda Barbosa Filho, who coordinated the data collection work, the reduction of the informality field, although today it continues to represent an amount equivalent to the Argentine economy, was due to some predominant factors.

Among them, he listed the expansion of GDP growth, the increase in the number of people with a formal contract in the labor market and the increase in the credit base.

Additional causes for this reduction in informality were presented by Luiz Schymura, director of Ibre. He expressly cited the increase in the country's economic activity, which gives more conditions for good-natured entrepreneurs to seek ways to legitimize themselves before society and the public authorities.

He added that if the country grows around 7% of GDP in 2010, it may be possible to reduce levels of informality.

The campaign to reduce tax evasion associated with informality, which sometimes flirts with organized crime, as in the case of piracy, must be intensified.

However, it is necessary for the authorities to show themselves capable of managing public resources well, so as not to legitimize a speech that uses specific issues of inefficiency to justify the escape from obligations with the Tax Authorities.

Nothing can support unreasonable claims, but it is necessary for state managers to be really concerned with presenting good services to the population.