BNDES prepares initiative to speed up release of resources
DCI - 11/13/2007
With the purpose of reducing the time between the acceptance of a project by the bank and the release of resources, the Brazilian Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES), in partnership with the Brazilian Association of the Infrastructure and Capital Goods Industries (Abdib), is developing the "Bank of Projects", which will have a database that will gather the information of works per type, cost, and development. "With a stock of project engineering and feasibility studies, public biddings may be performed quicker, as the necessary information will already be available in the system", explains Paulo Godoy, president of Abdib, who is working the details of the negotiation. Nowadays, in order to win a public tender for a work, it is necessary to develop an engineering study. When it does not exist, a project which is ready to go through the bidding stage is postponed for nearly two years, the time required for the documentation to be arranged. That measure would make this stage faster and cheaper. The study's average cost is 3% of the total value of the work. Since the system would be available for all sorts of companies, but by means of public resources, the companies that make use of the bank may return the BNDES the value of the study performed. Another initiative of the entities is the development of measures so that the BNDES itself may carry out bridge loans. "The infrastructure companies would not need to go through so many financial institutions in order to get resources", says Godoy. In order to speed up the loan, the companies with high rating would have priority in the analysis.