The Foreign Trade Chamber has met the requests of the Brazilian Chemical Industry Association; the measure is valid for 1 year.
The Gecex-Camex (Executive Committee for Management of the Foreign Trade Chamber) approved this Wednesday (September 18, 2024) the increase in import taxes for 30 chemical products. With the decision, the tariff for purchasing these items from abroad is now 20%.
Previously, the tariffs ranged from 7.6% to 12.6%.The measure meets a request from Abiquim (Brazilian Chemical Industry Association).
As reported by Poder360, the entity has been leading the fight to restore the capacity utilization of petrochemical plants, which reached their highest idleness rate in May of this year. Read the full list of products that had an increase in the import tariff (PDF – 62 kB).
In a statement to the digital newspaper, the president of Abiquim, André Passos, stated that the Gecex-Camex decision did not fully meet the association’s request, but that the increase in the tax rate is a signal that the government wants to help the sector recover national production.
Initially, the association requested the increase in import tariffs for 65 products. Although less than half of the request was accepted, the goods represent 66% of imports.
Passos stated that he expects an immediate effect and that the use of the installed capacity of the Brazilian industry could recover to a level close to 80% in the coming months.
The reduced use of installed capacity is an alarming indicator for the chemical sector. Plants operate in a continuous process, and if the facility occupancy falls below 80%, the effect is felt in the cost of products and plant efficiency, besides being a discouragement to new investments.
“It was a balanced decision based on technical criteria,” said Passos. “The main goal is not price, but to recover the local market and national production.
“The measure will be valid for 1 year from the publication of the decision in the Official Gazette of the Union.This is the government’s 2nd gesture under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to the chemical sector.
Last November, the Gecex-Camex revoked a measure from former President Jair Bolsonaro’s government (PL), which reduced the import tariff of some chemical products by 10%.
