Brazil should focus on “simplifying” and “removing bureaucracy” from business, says Wesley Batista

At an event this Saturday (12), Wesley Batista, shareholder of the J&F group, stated that the country should focus on an agenda of reducing bureaucracy to guarantee improvements for the country’s entrepreneurs. The businessman participated in a panel at the II Esfera Internacional Forum, in Rome, Italy.

“Without a doubt, the institutional role of a country, how things are going, influences (for businesspeople). But deep down we look at running the business a little independently of that”, he began.

His reservation, however, concerns the issue of bureaucracy. “There is one thing that Brazil had (to do), in our view, to improve the way it does business: it is to reduce bureaucracy. Brazil had to have an agenda focused on this”, he stated.

According to the businessman, under current conditions, “it is complex to operate in Brazil”. “Clearly, for us, Brazil had to have an absolute focus, on how to simplify and how to reduce bureaucracy,” he added.

Despite this, Batista stated that he believes that Brazilian results should improve, year by year.

“Brazil is growing, it has 200 million inhabitants, with a gigantic consumer market, very well-established institutions. So, we are optimistic and we think that next year will be better than 2024, as 2024 is being better, in our view, than 2023.”

At another point in the discussion, the member of the JBS Board of Directors cited as an example of processes to be reduced bureaucracy the taxation of products that are moved across regions of the country.

“For example, in São Paulo, which is not a large corn producer today. You bring grain from Mato Grosso do Sul, from Mato Grosso, you pay the ICMS there at origin. Enough, credit, you export the chicken, it’s there accumulating. And that generates tax judicialization. And then there is the fiscal war, one state not recognizing the other”, he stated.

“Without a doubt, we are walking. Logically, there are many things that can be simplified, simpler things”, and not just structural reforms, he assessed.