Author: Karina Nappi

Source: DCI - São Paulo / SP - 01/12/2009

SAO PAULO - Czech businessmen said to Brazilian businessmen and authorities that high taxes and the gigantic bureaucracy in the country are two points that hinder the interest of their companies to open branches in Brazil and also to invest in national companies. According to Valdimir Kuleda, president of Centro Projekt do Brasil, to open a business or bring a subsidiary of a Czech company, it is necessary to invest in qualified employees in sectors such as legal and administrative.

“In order for us to come to Brazil, we had to face fear and the tax and bureaucratic difficulty. There are countless taxes and rules that all companies must follow to manufacture a needle, so we had to hire lawyers, consultants, specialists in labor laws. Today, after nine years in Brazil, we are sure that the investment and the initial headaches were necessary for the return obtained ”, explained Kuleda during an event of the Associação Comercial de São Paulo (ACSP). According to the president, in order to do business in Brazil, it is necessary to have a head office in the State of São Paulo, as the largest commercial centers are in place.

The data presented by Centro Projekt, show that in 2001 the company's net profit was R $ 6.177 million, in 2008 the earnings result was R $ 82.602 million and for 2009 and 2010 the company's projections are of net profits of R $ 125.612 million and R $ 275.385 million, respectively.

Simple and modern

This is a situation opposite to that faced by Brazilian businessmen who opened a branch in the Czech Republic. According to Gilberto Paulo Salm, a consultant for the Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos (CBC), the country that is part of the European Union has simplified its bureaucratic and tax systems, in order to extinguish the complexity and difficulty of the Brazilian group's operations.

“The Czechs support foreign investments, giving the same benefits as domestic companies to international companies. The workforce is of a high level and extremely competent, to the point that there is no need for entrepreneurs in higher positions to have to go to the factory located in the country ”, reported consulted Salm.

He also informed that the choice for the purchase of a war industry in the Czech Republic was caused by the strategic positioning, it is located in the center of the European Union. “In order to have a global leadership, we had to reach the European countries, with that, CBC bought the German industry MEN and in March this year it acquired Sellier and Bellot. With the merger of the 3 companies, the group started to profit US $ 350 million per year and to occupy the second place in the world sales to civilians and military ”, claimed the consultant.

Salm affirmed, however, that investment abroad, in principle, reduces the export percentages of the Brazilian trade balance, since to unify the group's sales process, purchases of technological machines like the factories in the EU were and still are necessary.

“The factories we acquired are competitive and modern, and even though we have invested a lot in the two Brazilian factories, we are still lagging in comparison, so we have to import technologies such as the European ammunition bagging model, so that the Brazilian product can be used. become increasingly competitive abroad ”, declared Salm.

Alencar Burti, president of the ACSP, emphasized during an exclusive interview with the DCI, that the federal government, for more than 20 years, has received proposals for the tax issue and bureaucracy to be reduced and eliminated, but the difficulty in understanding the federal, state governments and municipal, to solve the problem makes a satisfactory agreement impossible.

“If Brazil followed the example of the Czech Republic and simplified the bureaucratic way for companies and entrepreneurs and jointly reduced the numbers and values ​​of taxes, it would obtain a greater amount of investments from foreign companies in the country, in addition to exporting manufactured products with greater value aggregate, instead of continuing to sell only commodities ”, he argued.

"Before Brazil could go without defining issues of high importance and would have the consequences after two decades, today if an issue like the tax reform goes without definition we will have a serious problem in two or three years", concluded Burti.