Economic freedom

Government seeks to simplify administration and reduce bureaucracy; will only occur after regulatory impact analysis.

The executive secretary of the Ministry of Economy, Marcelo Guaranys, defended on Thursday (13/6) the need to improve regulatory performance in the country to make Brazil more competitive. Attending the opening of the event "Provisional Measure of Economic Freedom: Perspectives and Challenges for Regulatory Quality in Brazil," conducted by the National Sanitary Vigilance Agency (Anvisa) and the Articulation Network of Regulatory Agencies (Radar), Guaranys highlighted that Brazil is one of the last ranked in the Global Competitiveness Index 2017-2018 regarding the weight of state regulation.

The  MP No 881/2019  provides parameters to assess the existence of regulatory abuse and establishes the need for Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) before editing standards. "We changed the law, but that's no use. We need to change the culture and regulatory agencies can help to help other regulatory bodies in Brazil implement this change, "said the executive secretary.

The director of program and liberalization of the Special Secretariat for Debureaucratization, Management and Digital Government of the Ministry of Economy, Geanluca Lorezon, who also participated in the event, said that, soon, a regulation will be issued with the rules for implementing article 5 of the MP of the Economic Freedom, which deals with the implementation of AIR.

The regulation will establish the beginning of the requirement, the content, the methodology of the analysis, the minimum requirements to be examined and the hypotheses in which it will be mandatory to carry out the RIA and in which the analysis may be dispensed with. 

Challenges

The program director of the Executive Secretariat of the Ministry of Economy, Kélvia Albuquerque, gave the first lecture of the seminar, which aimed to promote the sharing of information and knowledge and the exchange of experiences among regulatory bodies. She spoke about the importance of adopting mechanisms such as RIA and RRA as a way to make regulatory action simpler and less costly, leading to administrative simplification and reduction of bureaucracy.

After talking about the evolution of the improvement of the regulatory framework in the country, initiated in 2007, she highlighted the elaboration of the  General Guidelines and the Guidance Guide for Elaboration of Regulatory Impact Analysis , the edition of the MP of Economic Freedom and the approval of the PL of the Agencies (PL 6621) and cited several successful cases of RIA practice by some regulatory agencies, such as Anvisa, National Petroleum Agency, Natural Gas Biofuels and National Telecommunications Agency.

"It is now necessary to use the experience of federal regulatory agencies as a national reference in the dissemination and settling of good regulatory practices, leading especially to direct management where there is still resistance," said the director.

The new challenge, in Brazil and in the world, is to move forward in RRAs to ensure that standards remain up-to-date, efficient, consistent and contribute to regulatory objectives and cited the case of the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel), which ended to conclude an ARR on the regulation of energy distribution in Brazil in the last two decades. "It is critical to understand whether the regulation being made is useful, whether it has achieved the goals or whether it needs to change. The regulation is not written in stone and can and should be updated, said the director.