EN 
PT_BR 
GECEX (Management Committee of the Chamber of Foreign Commerce) published in the DOU (Official Gazette of the Union) this Monday (24), the Resolution No. 500/2023, revoking import tax exemptions for more than 200 photovoltaic equipment, including inverters and solar panels.
The ex-tariff regime basically consists of a mechanism for temporarily reducing the import tax rate for products not manufactured in the country. In recent years, a series of exemptions have been granted to solar energy equipment for the national market.
To the Solar Channel, Wladimir Janousek, executive director at JCS Consultoria e Serviços, who is closely following the GECEX process, said that the vast majority of revoked ex-tariffs were no longer active because they were for outdated products and were no longer being manufactured and imported into Brazil .
According to him, this entire revocation process is taking place because the volumes of ex-tariffs in the country were becoming very high and thus burdening the country.
“This whole process began in mid-May this year, with the publication of two public revocation consultations on the MDIC (Ministry of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services) website for modules, inverters and other equipment”, he highlighted.
In total, there are more than 20 thousand ex-tariffs granted for equipment and components from all commercial and industrial segments, many of which were granted to be used only once, according to Janousek. “In other words, there really was a need for cleaning to be done,” he commented.
In addition to the more than 200 revocations carried out, another 345 requests for solar energy equipment are still in the analysis process and should also be revoked during the months of August and September, as explained by Janousek.
“The revocation process is publicized and the companies that submitted the ex-tariff have up to 20 days to contest the decision and send their defense with the justifications why they believe that this ex-tariff should not be revoked. In this publication, only ex-tariffs that had not received appeal or defense from interested companies were revoked”, he pointed out.
For this reason, the executive director at JCS Consultoria e Serviços assesses that it is still too early to draw up any prognosis and make any type of analysis on the impacts that these and other revocations could have on the solar energy sector.
“The revocations published this week were concentrated on products that are technologically obsolete. However, the next revocations may result in the cancellation of ex-tariffs for models that are still in use in the market”, he pointed out.
