On November 14th 2014, Federal Law no. 13,043/2014 was enacted.
Among its main goals are the dynamization of Brazilian Capital
Market and the improvement of the tax norms applied to its
operations. It also extended until 2020 the deadlines listed in
Federal Law no. 12,341/2011 regarding the private fundraising to
infrastructure projects through the grant of tax benefits.
In order to attract investments to the areas considered as priority
by the Federal Government, namely: electric energy, oil and natural
gas, logistics, transportation and telecommunications, were
established lower tax rates or tax exemption over the capital
earned from investments in the so-called "infrastructure
debentures" to allow that these sectors continue to benefit
from the incentives given to this type of issuance to finance their
projects.
Due to low market adherence to the 14 issues performed until now,
the Government has been using the BNDES to enable a greater
participation of individuals in the acquisition of these
securities. Keeping this in mind, BNDES will release its first
infrastructure bond fund in the first quarter of 2015, whose
appraisal is expected to reach the equity of R$ 1 billion.
If nothing else, the Head of the BNDES' Alternative Energies
Department, Antonio Tovar, in an interview to Valor Econômico
journal, assesses that the success of the referred fund demands a
range of diversified debentures, so as to attract investors and, as
well, to lessen the risks beared by them.
The news seems to be cheering for those who intend to make use of
this sort of issuance to finance their infrastructure-related
projects, whose adherence to the debenture model has been
stimulated through the simplification of the marketable securities
issuance's authorization procedure. Hence, the interested
companies shall, through a Specific Purpose Entity, proceed to
frame their infrastructure projects as overriding along with the
specific Ministry of its area of activity.
The Ministries whose areas deal with major part of the
debentures' offering, namely transportation and energy,
published respectively Ordinances no. 09/2012 and 90/12, that
established the procedure to frame overriding investment projects,
in such a way to allow the issue of infrastructure debentures by
those who are interested. The referred Ordinances state, also, that
the occasional verification of the projects' implementation
shall be held by the regulatory agency of the concerned area.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.