* By Rodolfo Fücher
The year 2020, marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, brought many lessons and resilience. We had to review strategies and take more care of our employees, family and friends. However, associativism continued to demonstrate its importance in demanding an agenda of measures to guarantee the survival of companies, the maintenance of jobs and the digital acceleration in business, government, education, health and many others in the face of the changes brought about by social distance.
After a lot of work, cooperation, dialogue, negotiations and virtual meetings, ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies believes that several advances have occurred. One of the most important and striking was our plea for more legal and tax security, in which we celebrate the historic advance in the Supreme Court in favor of the incidence of ISS (and not ICMS) in software operations, through the judgment of ADIs 1945-MT and 5659 -SP.
In the economic area, we highlight governmental measures that counted on our commitment, such as the easing of guarantees to obtain credit lines, which help in the operationalization of credit at the end for the entrepreneur through PRONAMPE; the exemption from presenting several certificates for obtaining credit from public financial institutions; the use of the Union Guarantee Fund in financing lines, with no financial counterpart from the companies; and the start of construction of the AntecipaGov platform, which will allow suppliers to use their contracts with the federal public administration as a guarantee to make loans and financing in financial institutions accredited by the Ministry of Economy (ME).
In the regulatory sphere, we maintained a continuous dialogue and debate with representatives of the Legislative and Executive branches, emphasizing the approval of the Bidding Law; the Law that reduces the installation inspection fees and the operation inspection fees of the machine-to-machine communication systems to zero, which will favor IoT projects; and the extension of the tax exemption until December 2021; in addition to the progress in processing the Legal Framework for Startups, which was recently approved by the Chamber of Deputies.
In a year of economic downturn, the association maintained its representativeness, bringing together approximately 2 thousand associated or affiliated companies, which total about 85% of the billing of the software and services segment in Brazil, distributed in 22 Brazilian states and the Federal District.
In addition, the organization began to reap the rewards of the strategy of attracting members in other countries and registered an important participation in a virtual exhibition organized by commercial authorities in China.
Among important achievements for the sector in 2020, ABES also brought together more than 80 entities, representing 14 sectors of the Brazilian economy and totaling almost 80% of national GDP, in forming the LGPD Front, which seeks more legal certainty on a topic that affects everyone The Brazilians.
The Uma Empresa Ética program has also increased its scope, reaching around 80 companies seeking to adopt a code of ethics, compliance training and anonymous reporting channel. In addition, we started to deliver certificates to the associates who put these pillars into practice.
All of this was only possible thanks to the trust, work and help of our associates, our directors, advisors, employees and suppliers, further confirming the importance of associativism.
Expectations for 2021 remain high. Whatever the situation, ABES reaffirms its purpose of contributing to the construction of a more digital and less unequal Brazil, in which information technology plays a fundamental role for the democratization of knowledge and the creation of new opportunities for all. We understand that the entity's role is to ensure a business environment conducive to innovation, ethical, dynamic and globally competitive.
* Rodolfo Fücher is president of ABES (Brazilian Association of Software Companies)
EN 
PT 
