Abundance of funds and lack of projects in the area of Inovation
Valor Econômico - 06/26/2008
This year, the Studies and Projects Financing Agency (Finep) has R$ 450 million (US$ 276.1 million) available to support projects considered innovative. The main appeal of this program is that it offers non-reimbursable financings, in other words, the companies that receive them do not have to repay the money. Last year, the package also reached nearly R$ 450 million (US$ 276.1 million), but in the end of the process only R$ 300 million (US$ 184.1 million) were invested. The current program for non-reimbursable financing of Finep sets forth that the minimum value of investment is R$ 1 million (US$ 613.5 thousand), with 36 months for the execution of the project. A new initiative, however, is ready to handle projects which are really in their initial phase of operation. Today, in Brasília, the entity will present the Prime, program that foresees the investment of R$ 1.3 billion (US$ 797.5 million) in the next four years in companies of technological basis under development. The Prime foresees that the total funding value will be R$ 240 thousand (US$ 147.2 thousand) per company, to be released in two installments, within 24 months. The first part, R$ 120 thousand (US$ 73.6 thousand), is not reimbursable. In the second part, the entrepreneur has 100 months to repay the loan, at no interest. The projects will be selected by 18 business incubators spread through the country, including entities like the Center for Studies and Advanced Systems of Recife (Cesar-PE), the Incubation Center of Technological Companies (Cietec-SP) and the Incubation Center of Aracaju (Cise-SE). With the Prime, the goal is that 5 thousand companies are benefited until 2011. Finep, which is a branch of support to research connected to the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT), is not the only source of non-reimbursable resources. The BNDES (Brazilian Social and Economic Development Bank), which offered R$ 100 million (US$ 51.8 million) last year by means of the Technological Fund (Funtec), also renewed its program for this year and it now has R$ 400 million (US$ 245.4 million) available for non-reimbursable investments. That means that, added to the initiatives of Finep and BNDES only - not including programs from agencies in the fomentation of researches like Fapesp and CNPq - there is more than R$ 1 billion (US$ 613.5 million) in funds available to support projects of technological innovation, without the need to repay the money.