the minister Alexandre de Moraes of the Federal Supreme Court (STF ), suspended the reduction of the Tax on Industrialized Products (IPI) for goods that are produced by the Manaus Free Trade Zone.
“The Amazon region has socioeconomic peculiarities that require the legislator to give special treatment to inputs coming from this part of the national territory,” he said.
“Hence the relevance of the creation of the Manaus Free Zone and its express maintenance by the Federal Constitution of 1988, in order to protect the legitimate unequal treatment given to goods produced in this region, qualified as free trade in relation to those from other parts. from the country”.
The decision was made in a lawsuit filed by the party Solidarity which questioned three federal decrees in which the government expanded the linear tax reduction from 25% to up to 35%, as of May 1, and zeroed the tax rate IPI concerning concentrated extracts for the production of soft drinks, reaching the manufacturers of this input in the ZFM.
The party argued that the way in which the reduction of the IPI tax burden was implemented alters the competitive balance and affronts the constitutional protection of the Free Trade Zone.
According to the minister, the norms questioned are effectively capable of impacting the regional development model that the federal Constitution decided to keep.
“Whether in its economic aspect, by compromising the region’s inequality as a form of compensation for the higher costs arising from the challenges faced by local industry – thus affecting the competitiveness of the aforementioned hub vis-à-vis other Brazilian industrial centers –, or in its social aspect , by weakening several positive externalities related, among others, to the generation of jobs and income and environmental preservation”, he said.
This week, the parliamentary bench of the amazon and the state governor met with Moraes to try to overturn the reduction.
Source: CNN Brasil
I am Sophia william, author of World Stock Market. I have a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and I have worked as a reporter for several news websites. I have a passion for writing and informing people about the latest news and events happening in the world. I strive to be accurate and unbiased in my reporting, and I hope to provide readers with valuable information that they can use to make informed decisions.
