The Senate approved on Wednesday night (27) the bill that maintains resources to guarantee loans to micro and small companies through the National Support Program for Micro and Small Businesses (Pronampe). The text, which returned to the Senate after undergo changes in the Chamberproceeds for presidential sanction.
The approved text postpones until 2025 the return to the National Treasury of unused amounts from the fund related to loans through Pronampe. The program was created in May 2020 to help small businesses financially while maintaining jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The proposal also makes permanent the use of funds from the Operations Guarantee Fund (FGO) in operations not honored.
One of the changes made in the Chamber, and approved by the senators, exempts companies from complying with the clause to maintain the number of jobs provided for in hiring until December 31, 2021. This rule will only be re-established for loans made from 2022.
The text also ends the deadline, stipulated until the end of 2021, for the government to increase the contribution of resources to the FGO to meet Pronampe, as the program has become permanent. If this increase in the Union’s participation takes place through extraordinary credits, the amounts recovered or not used must be used to amortize the debt. Other amounts used by the FGO to honor unpaid installments should be used to cover new contracted operations.
The senators also approved an expansion of the Credit Stimulus Program (PEC) to expand its access to medium-sized companies with up to R$300 million in annual gross revenue, considered medium-sized. The legislation that created the program intended the PEC only for individual micro-entrepreneurs (MEI), micro and small companies, rural producers and cooperatives and fishing and shellfish gatherers’ associations with a maximum revenue of R$ 4.8 million. For the current target audience, the text reserves 70% of the total amount that can be hired.
The program allows banks to rely on presumptive federal tax credits to be used to decrease the amount payable in exchange for loans made at their risk. The contracting of operations, whose term of operation had ended in 2021, will be reopened until December 2022.
* With information from the Senate Agency
