On last Monday, 11, at the Meeting of New Mayors in Brasília, the federal government launched the Contract + Brazil. The platform will allow the registration and hiring of individual micro-entrepreneurs (MEIs) by the federal government, states, and municipalities throughout the country. Currently, maintenance and minor repair services can be hired, which already occur without bidding. In this initial phase, there is an estimated potential opportunity for democratization of around R$ 6 billion in new contracts annually.
To participate in Contract + Brazil, suppliers just need to register using gov.br login and provide the services they offer. The demands of interest will be informed via Whatsapp to the provided phone number. The first contracts will be made by the federal government, but the environment is also open for executives from states and municipalities to join.
Cooperation
The idea of the portal arose from a pioneering initiative of the Recife city hall, which is being extended to the rest of the country with the support of technology provided by Serpro. At the meeting, a symbolic cooperation agreement was signed between the federal government technology company, the Ministries of Administration and Innovation (MGI) and Entrepreneurship, Micro and Small Business (MEMP), in addition to the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI), the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), and the Secretariat of Science, Technology, and Innovation of the Recife city hall.
“Contrata+Brasil is a response to an important discussion about public accounts in Brazil, it is an initiative to change our contracts seeking the strengthening of local suppliers,” announced the MGI minister, Esther Dweck. According to the minister, Brazil has 16 million MEIs, with only 70 thousand registered in the federal government’s supplier database, which represents only 0.4% of the total.
Esther Deweck added that the work of her ministry is not only to bring federal government programs to states and municipalities, but also to choose good initiatives from other entities and extend them throughout the country. “Thus, we thank the AGU, which ensured us legal security, Serpro, which will implement the expansion of the platform, and Sebrae, for their work in qualifying the MEIs.”
Good practices
“Every good practice has the ability to be replicated and deserves to be absorbed, and we will collaborate, with all the expertise and technological capacity of Serpro, with this technological expansion process led by MGI,” said the president of the state-owned company, Alexandre Amorim. “It is a technology that will democratize access for microentrepreneurs to public procurement, contributing to the dynamism of the local economy. Carrying out an activity like this, is making the city pulse,” he evaluated.
Amorim also took advantage of the signing of the cooperation agreement to announce the Prefeitura+Digital, a program from the federal government’s technology company that promotes the modernization and construction of digital services for cities with up to 30 thousand inhabitants.
For the Minister of MEMP, Márcio França, the new government’s logic of operation should be, above all, proactive. ‘This initiative in Recife, which inspired Contrata+Brasil, reverses the standard of the citizen who demands and awaits State action. Now, the State is the one looking for the citizen, with gains for both parties,’ he explained.
