Doing business in Brazil - World Bank Report 2018 - a tiny surprise

Brazil has clibmed from the 123rd place to the 120th.

I understand that part of this improvement is due to a reform in the import/export procedures. They were heavily dependent on paper forms but have been updated to accept electronic form, via a centralized website.

This has been one of the most subtle reforms of Michel Temer`s government. But it has caused a lot of impact on day to day operations. This is impressive if you compare it to the enormous effort being put in the reform of the pension system, with almost zero results so far.

It also shows that a lot of the problems faced by Brazilian companies are not structural problems. The legal system is fairly well designed, most of the time.

 It is the small things that really delay business:  the double notarizations, the lack of standardization, the need to xerox a document three times, because the first two copies were not clear enought, etc.

Some other changes of procedure of the same nature than the export simplifcation have been adopted recently, with very good results. The adoption of the the Apostille for foreign documents, for example, has been working fine.

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