Economic and Social Development’s National Bank (free English version of  Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social – BNDES) is a governmental initiative to promote Brazilian’s regional and socio-environmental development, just as to give incentive for businesses with potential to create employment, income and social inclusion. Those incentives come through funding investments, subscription of securities, guarantee provision and non-refundable resources.

Focused on providing loans to finance investments, in addition to providing non-refundable resources to social, cultural and technological projects, BNDES makes the access to technologies easier and allows the implementation of action plans that are strategic to the business growth and for new ventures. Accordingly, BNDES is today a great tool to domestic companies, as it helps implementing and expanding these ventures, as well as facilitates the acquisition of their services and products by costumers through financings with unique conditions.

Companies which want supply machines and equipments with BNDES funding must have their principal business office in Brazil, in the majority of the cases at least two years of age, in addition to reach a minimum accreditation index, calculated according to a system which have completely changed in recent times – in the past, the products needed to achieve a national index in value and weight. After the new system was in force, the machines and equipment need to achieve at least 50% of a Registration Index, which is composed by Structure and Product Index that represents a 30% minimum of national content, added to optional qualifiers which can include technological content of the product, innovation, research and development expenses. The manufacturers can carry out their own product accreditation, directly in the BNDES web portal, or they can count on consulting services provided by experienced professionals, as provided by Dutra Business Management, to facilitate the data collection and provision process, as well as to perform a registration viability analysis and planning measures to achieve the necessary index.

Besides the FINAME lines to machines and equipment acquisition, BNDES also allows finance to a wide range of products and services through BNDES Card (English version of Cartão BNDES), which also covers parts, inputs, packages, building materials, services and softwares, besides machines and devices;  for clients with up to BRL 300 million of revenues. BNDES Card financing is a lot simplified and works exactly like a credit card, which has to be issued by a bank of the client’s choice.

–

Paula Schneider.