Trade Facilitation in Brazil: Bureaucracy and Compliance in the Port of Santos
This paper explores the topic of bureaucracy in maritime trade in the Port of Santos in Brazil considering the perspectives of compliance for firms. Considerable research was found on the grounds of bureaucracy in Brazil yet only a few of them associates the topic to maritime trade in Brazil, partic...
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| Format: | Dissertation (University of Nottingham only) |
| Language: | English English |
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2015
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/30140/ |
| Summary: | This paper explores the topic of bureaucracy in maritime trade in the Port of Santos in Brazil considering the perspectives of compliance for firms. Considerable research was found on the grounds of bureaucracy in Brazil yet only a few of them associates the topic to maritime trade in Brazil, particularly when considering the entry of goods into the country; in other words, when goods are imported into Brazil.
The topic of trade facilitation incorporates tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade; generally, bureaucracy is associated to red tape and treated as non-barriers to trade, particularly since most tariff barriers have been reduced as an effort of the international community to improve global trade.
The focus of this study is to understand the impact of bureaucracy in the main Brazilian Port – the Port of Santos – through the eyes of firms and agents operating in Brazil and suggest ways to improve the governmental procedures. The paper is an exploratory case study of the Port of Santos, interviews and a questionnaire was used in order to contact agents operating in the field from a bottom-up approach to the topic.
It was found that in general firms include the topic of duties when discussing bureaucracy in Brazil due to the high value and complexity of taxes charged by the Brazilian government, the topic also includes documentation conformance, the need to obtain specific licenses to trade; and mostly important procedures from the clearance stage. Bureaucracy in maritime trade has roots in the government regulation to protect the domestic industry yet it is part of a much broader topic that encompasses industrial policy and the development of privatisation as a way to boost investment, this paper focuses exclusively on factors that can be directly associated to bureaucracy in maritime trade.
Firms are currently struggling to endure the impacts of bureaucracy associated with the devaluation of the Brazilian real due to the current political situation in Brazil. The author also suggests a way to calculate the costs of bureaucracy as a way to quantify bureaucracy and suggests that bureaucracy is directly associated with poor administration practice and it is currently holding the country back. |
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