The Ministry of Economy provided an update to the federal authorization process on the establishment of foreign company branches in Brazil by foreign companies seeking to operate in the country without the legal establishment of an affiliated Brazilian company.
The Ministry of Economy provided an update to the federal authorization process on the establishment of foreign company branches in Brazil by foreign companies seeking to operate in the country without the legal establishment of an affiliated Brazilian company. Such branches are provided in the Brazilian Civil Code (Law n. 10.406/2002, specifically articles 1.134 to 1.141), while Decree n.º 9.787/2019 delegated the granting of federal operating permits to the Ministry of Economy.
The granting of an operating permit by the ministry is carried out digitally since 2019, through the Gov.br website, and is ruled by Normative Instruction n. 77/2020 from the Department of Registration of Business and Integration (DREI) at the Ministry of Economy (see more in the 10th edition of the Regulatory Report). According to the ministry, the authorization process now takes up to three days to conclude, compared to the average of 45 days in previous years, from the step of requesting a permit by the foreign company’s legal representative domiciled in Brazil to the permit’s publication in the Federal Official Gazette.
According to the ministry, 36 new operating permits were requested by foreign companies in 2021, apart from the 21 total requests in the three years between 2016 and 2018. In the last three years, between 2019 and 2021, 92 requests were submitted through the new digital format. In addition to the instructions provided on the Gov.br website, the Ministry of Economy provides a guide on the authorization process for foreign company branches on its website (available only in Portuguese).
