São Paulo – The simplification of imports in Brazil, starting October 1st with the migration to the Single Foreign Trade Portal, will save firms BRL 40 billion (USD 7 billion) yearly, according to Tatiana Prazeres, the secretary of foreign trade at Brazil’s Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade, and Services.
The ministry estimates that the increase in competitiveness and the reduction of bureaucracy will add USD 130 billion to the Brazilian economy by 2040. The Single Portal is replacing Siscomex, the Brazilian foreign trade registration system that has been in operation since 1993.
The new platform reduces the requirement for documents, executes processes that were previously done sequentially simultaneously, and allows for the issuance of flexible licenses, where multiple commercial operations are authorized by cargo volume or fixed periods. With the portal, instead of filling out several documents, the company will complete the Single Import Declaration (Duimp).
In the case of exports, the migration to the portal with a unified declaration began in 2017 and was completed in 2018, reducing the average time for the release of goods from 13 to 4.8 days. For imports, the pilot project for the Duimp started in 2018. Since then, the average release time for goods arriving in the country has dropped from 17 to nine days.
Although it has been in place for six years, the Duimp was applied in a testing phase until now. According to the trade secretary, the complete migration of imports from Siscomex to the Single Foreign Trade Portal will result in an additional reduction in time, from nine to five days in the average timeframe for purchasing goods from abroad. The new system will benefit around 50,000 existing importers in the country.
“The cost of goods held up per day is equivalent to 0.8% of its value. Based on the importation of USD 242 billion last year and the reduction of operations by four days [from nine to five days], we estimate a gain of around BRL 40 billion for foreign trade companies [approximately USD 7 billion],” explained Tatiana Prazeres.
To arrive at the calculation of USD 130 billion in gains for the gross domestic product, the secretary of foreign trade explained that the ministry calculated the gains for other sectors of the economy, taking into account the deregulation and reduction of the cost of doing business in Brazil (production costs).
Phases of Brazil’s portal migration
The migration of imports to the Single Portal begins this Tuesday (1st) and will continue until the end of 2025. From October to December of this year, the Duimp will be mandatory for maritime imports. From January to July 2025, it will apply to cargo arriving by air. From July to December of the following year, it will be required for imports through land borders and via the Manaus Free Trade Zone.
Read more:
Brazil speeds up import procedures
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
