Aug 19, 2020

 A partnership signed between the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights (MMFDH) and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) seeks to change the reality of the 16 city halls of Marajó Island (PA). The modernization project of the municipal bodies is one of the initiatives of the 2020-2023 Action Plan of Abrace o Marajó (Embrace Marajó) and was presented at a meeting that brought together various players of the program on this Tuesday morning (18).

Representatives and the MMFDH holder, Damares Alves, the minister of Comptroller General of the Union (CGU), Wagner Rosário, the president of BNDES, Gustavo Montezano, and 14 of the 16 mayors of the archipelago attended the meeting.

In the event, the teams presented the main actions to be developed by the project. The first of them, which should last until December, is the elaboration of a detailed diagnosis concerning the situation of the city halls. This is an important step towards giving an overview that will serve as a starting point for supporting municipalities.

For Montezano, Abrace o Marajó has now taken another effective step, with the delivery of new management mechanisms to the city halls of the archipelago. "This will pave the way for municipalities to facilitate the actions of entrepreneurs in the region," said the president of BNDES.

"We see that these city halls are unable to create their own destiny and be protagonists in the territory. This partnership comes to change that," explained MMFDH special advisor, Henrique Villa.

Villa, who is also one of the coordinators of Abrace o Marajó, highlighted that one of the main obstacles in the development of the entities is the default in the Auxiliary Information Service for Voluntary Transfers (Cauc).

According to the MMFDH advisor, all 16 municipalities are negative in the service, which prevents them from receiving voluntary transfers and making credit transactions for funding and investments. "One of the first measures to be taken in January 2021 will be to turn into positive the Cauc of the city halls," he said.

The Cauc system is an auxiliary service that provides summarized information about the situation of compliance with tax requirements by the municipalities. The system collects data from other institutions, and, after obtaining regularity or pending data, it gathers all this information in the statement displayed on its page (Source: CNM).

Structural improvement

The partnership between MMFDH and BNDES goes far beyond bureaucratic issues. Physical structures and personnel will receive improvements through remodeling and modernization of spaces and capacity building and training of staff. The goal is to attract new businesses and projects, encouraging municipal autonomy.

"You cannot attract business to the territory when you have precarious structures of governance and municipal management. The improvement of the business environment will be not only in physical terms, which includes information technology and the layout of the city hall, but also in the preparation of players from city halls to negotiate new projects and new economic actions," noted Villa.

Territorial planning was also highlighted at the meeting. According to Villa, in Marajó, there are streets, squares and homes without proper signage and addressing. With this action plan, cities will be ordered more appropriately. "It is difficult to be a consumer and have online access to goods and services that most have today, for example," he concluded.