Brazil opens 1.3 million companies in the first four months of this year

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil opened 1,350,127 companies in the first four months of this year (from January to April). The numbers represent an increase of 11.5% compared to the third quarter of 2021 (September to December).

Discounting the companies closed in the period, the balance for the last four months is 808,243 new companies. The data are from the Companies Map Bulletin, released on Monday, June 6, by the Ministry of Economy.

With this result, the balance until April this year reached 19,373,257 active companies in Brazil. São Paulo has 5.5 million companies; 395,000 of them opened this year. Next come Minas Gerais (2.1 million) and Rio de Janeiro (1.7 million).

Another important data is the reduction in the average time to open a company, which reached one day and 16 hours in the first four months of 2022, the lowest recorded in the historical series that began in 2019.

This time represents a drop of 8 hours (16.7%) compared to the previous four-month period. Compared with the same period in 2021, the data shows a reduction of 1 day and 13 hours (48.1%).

“This Business Map already brings the picture of the effectiveness of the government’s measures since 2019. We are always focused on the tripod of fiscal austerity, first of all, improvement of the business environment, and productivity gain for the country, as a whole,” highlighted the Secretary of Infrastructure Development of the Productivity and Competitiveness Secretariat (Sepec) of the Ministry of economy, Alexandre Ywata.

According to the Ministry of Economy, among the measures that contribute to this agility is the One-Stop-Shop, a technological solution that integrates data between agencies of each sphere of government to speed up the process of opening, closing, and changes in companies’ data.

Another fundamental action to speed up the opening of new businesses is the use of the “gov.br” electronic signature, which simplifies the process of starting a business free of charge and prevents the entrepreneur from having to buy a digital certificate or issue a power of attorney for a lawyer or accountant to carry out the process.

Also contributing to the reduction in the time it takes to open a company is the automatic registration for obtaining the CNPJ for up to 96% of the companies that open and the dispensation of permits and licenses for low-risk activities.

“These positive numbers show the success of our simplification and de-bureaucratization policies, which are based, fundamentally, on the digital transformation of services. And this is how we will continue until we reach the goal of opening a company in less than a day all over the country,” said the director of the National Department of Business Registration and Integration of the Ministry of Economy, André Luiz Santa Cruz.

INDIVIDUAL MICRO-ENTREPRENEUR (MEI)

Of the total number of companies opened in the first four months of this year, 1,066,350 are Individual Microentrepreneurs (MEI), a type of individual businessman with a simplified process for starting a business and a special taxation regime.

In the period, there was an increase of 15.1% in the opening of MEI compared to the last four months of 2021. There are already 11,118,449 active MEIs in the country.

This modality is responsible for 57.4% of the active businesses in Brazil, besides representing 79.0% of the companies opened in the first four months of 2022.

Besides the facilities to formalize the business and the simplified tax framework, the MEI has simplified measures for access to credit.

CREDIT

The Federal Government has been stimulating credit supply for entrepreneurs through three main measures.

The Brazil Entrepreneur Credit Program will release up to R$87 billion (US$18 billion) in credit this year.

The credit line of the National Program in Support of Micro and Small Enterprises (Pronampe) will make available another R$50 billion. Between 2020 and 2021, Pronampe moved R$25 billion and benefited 320,000 companies.

Finally, the Credit Stimulus Program (PEC) has an additional R$14 billion available this year.

ABOUT THE SURVEY

The Company Map is a technological solution developed by the Special Secretariat for Debureaucratization, Management, and Digital Government, in partnership with Serpro.

Through the Map and the four-monthly Bulletin, it is possible to verify data on the opening of companies in each region, state, or municipality, by type of activity and time of opening, easily found and compared with previous periods.