Anfavea withdraws from going to court against measure that favors BYD and other Chinese brands

The president of the National Association of Automotive Vehicle Manufacturers (Anfavea), Igor Calvet, said that the entity will not appeal to the courts to challenge the government’s decision to extend for another six months the import tax exemption that benefits electric and hybrid cars assembled in the country from imported kits.

After a meeting with the acting Minister of Finance, Dario Durigan, on the afternoon of last Thursday (9), Calvet said that the discussion on the subject is closed, although the association continues to disagree with the measure. “We are against the government’s position (…), but we are not going to judicialize this issue,” he said. According to him, an action would take years – longer than the validity of the benefit itself, of six months – which would make the dispute innocuous.

Instead of the lawsuit, Anfavea is considering filing a complaint with the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU). The objective, according to Calvet, is not to annul the decision, but to demand more transparency in the governance of the Chamber of Foreign Trade (Camex): the entity claims that there was a lack of prior publication of the agenda and adequate space for the contradictory before the benefit was renewed.

According to the president of Anfavea, during the meeting the government recognized that there is an imbalance between the growth of the market and the performance of the national industry. According to Calvet, registrations have been advancing at a faster pace than Brazilian production, driven by the increase in imports – especially from Chinese brands.

Imported electrified vehicles grew 70.6% in the first half of the year, and the share of these vehicles in the market jumped from 16.9% to 20.9% in just six months, according to the association. The renewal of the benefit has a ceiling of R$ 2.4 billion (US$ 463 million) in imports and, for the entity, deepens a distortion: of the approximately 100 thousand national electrified vehicles sold in the semester, about 54 thousand came from kit assembly lines (SKD/CKD), and not from full manufacturing in the country.

Despite the concern with the participation of national production, the entity maintains a positive outlook for the sector. The expectation is that the Brazilian market will reach the mark of 3 million vehicles sold in 2026, a result driven by the 18.5% growth recorded in the first half compared to the same period last year. If the projection is confirmed, it will be the best performance since 2014.

Calvet also defended greater predictability in the regulation of tax reform. He said that the automotive industry needs security to plan long-term investments, especially in view of the replacement of the IPI by the Selective Tax, scheduled for 2027.