The Decree No. 9.107 was published in the Official Gazette of July 27th, 2017, establishing the deadlines and requirements applicable to fragmented industries in the scope of trade remedies investigations. Fragmented industries are those in which there are low barriers to entry and lack of economies of scale, usually consisting of large numbers of producers with small market share and small and medium-sized business structure.
Fragmented sectors typically have difficulty in gathering the data needed to fill out the questionnaire for trade remedies procedures and in meeting the required deadlines. In the previous system, many fragmented industries could not even initiate investigations because of difficulties faced in meeting legal requirements. To date, only three trade remedies measures involving this type of sector have been applied in Brazil, namely in the cases of (i) footwear, (ii) powdered milk and (iii) garlic.
The new decree makes deadlines and requirements applicable to fragmented sectors more flexible in order to facilitate their participation in trade remedies procedures. The text was prepared following public consultation, as well as discussions in the technical groups of the Chamber of Foreign Trade (Camex), held during 2017.
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