Senate approves third round of Pronampe and maintains rules for micro and small businesses | Politics

If signed into law, this will be the third round of funding for the program, created in May. For that, the text still needs the approval of the Chamber of Deputies.

The rapporteur, Senator Kátia Abreu (PP-TO), presented an initial report in which she proposed higher interest rates for granting loans. During the discussion on Wednesday, however, the parliamentarian opted for keep the rules of the original program.

The decision was made on the basis that the resources reserved for Pronampe are “extraordinary credit” and cannot be “postponed” until next year.

According to the approved project, the maximum annual interest rate will be equal to the Selic rate (currently 2% per year), plus 1.25%, incidents on the contracted value. The initial proposal was to add 6% to Selic.

Depending on the project, the amount financed may be divided into up to 36 installments.

Pronampe is aimed at micro-companies with income of up to R $ 360 thousand per year and small companies with annual income of R $ 360 thousand to R $ 4.8 million.

Regarding the amount that can be loaned to small businesses, the main rules of the program were maintained:

• The value is up to 30% of annual gross income last year, which corresponds to, at most, R $ 108 thousand for micro and R $ 1.4 million for small companies;
• For new companies, with less than a year of operation, there are two options: the loan limit can be up to half of the capital stock or 30% of the average monthly billing; in this case, the average is multiplied by 12 at the time of calculation.

The current law for Pronampe also gives the possibility of loan to professionals, as long as they do not have an employment relationship of any kind or have participation or partnership in any company.

In this case, they have the opportunity to start paying off the loan only eight months after the credit transaction is formalized. The amount of financing granted by the Liberals cannot exceed R $ 100 thousand.

Micro and small companies can use the funds obtained for investments, to pay employee salaries or for working capital, with expenses such as water, electricity, rent, restocking, among others. The bill prohibits the use of funds to distribute profits and dividends between business partners.

Financing the program

At each stage of the program, the Federal Government increased its participation in the Operational Guarantee Fund (FGO) to support Pronampe. In the first stage, the contribution was R $ 15.9 billion; in the second, R $ 12 billion. Now, both the author of the proposal, Jorginho Mello (PL-SC), and the rapporteur, Kátia Abreu, estimate an increase of R $ 10 billion in the fund, within the quota of the federal government.

This private fund was created in 2009 and is managed by Banco do Brasil. It guarantees credit operations to micro, small and medium-sized companies, as well as to individual micro-entrepreneurs (MEI).

The amount of R $ 10 billion is not specified in the project. The resources that will make up the fund, to enable the third phase, will come from money not used in another initiative, the Emergency Employment Support Program. The law establishes that banks that do not lend the resources of this program must return them to the Union.