Inmetro will adopt a more pro-company stance and revoke rules

Inmetro (National Institute of Metrology, Quality and Technology) will publish this week a new regulatory framework with guidelines that should significantly change the way in which the body carries out its inspection and regulatory activities.

The autarchy linked to the Ministry of Economy, which currently works with more than 500 regulations of its own and inspects everything from toys and pressure cookers to cars and oil meters, will adopt a less interventionist and pro-business stance.

For this, it will seek to move away from lower risk products, revoke at least 200 rules seen as unnecessary, increase the participation of companies in the creation of rules, pave the way for market self-regulation and have a more educational than punitive stance.

The president of Inmetro, Marcos Heleno Guerson de Oliveira Junior, denies that the creation of the regulatory model will weaken the power of the autarchy and says that the objective is to generate efficiency and focus attention on activities seen as more important.

“The State is not in a position to inspect everything at the same level, it cannot regulate all products”, he tells sheet. “You have to focus on what is most urgent and important. In products where the risk is lower, it is always good for the market to regulate itself”, she says.

According to him, the changes are necessary to comply with the Economic Freedom Act — enacted in 2019 and which establishes free market guarantees and simplification of rules. The changes in the autarchy were discussed with representatives of the companies in public consultation.

All Inmetro regulations will be gradually revised over the next five years. Among the next on the list are texts related to electricity meters, car speed meters, taximeters and mototaximeters.

About 40% of Inmetro’s regulation deals with lower risk products, according to the president. In these cases, the bureaucracy for products to enter the market can be reduced, including the need to register with Inmetro. Part can be wiped out and even revoked.

“The idea in these reviews is to leave only the essentials. And, above all, not to be so prescriptive in how the product should be — but to say what it should achieve”, he says.

Another change is in supervision. Budget limits and staff strength prevent the municipality from permanently monitoring such a wide range of products, he says.

Therefore, it will be necessary to use technology so that society itself takes its complaints to the body – and those with the highest number or risk receive priority.

He says that inspections are now carried out without necessarily obeying a logic of greater suspicion or seriousness of problems, which makes the municipality spend hours of server work in innocuous inspections.

“It’s nice not to find any problems, but I spend man-hours. Is there no way to use technology and user information to identify where there is a sign of where something might be wrong? And then we enter into intelligent market surveillance” , says.

To achieve the goal, Inmetro is developing an application to be launched by the end of the year. It will allow people to report or register suspicions via cell phone, making the municipality plan inspections according to the population’s demand.

“That bakery X, in the last few months, had 25 complaints. So I’m going to send the inspector there”, he exemplifies. For him, the novelty will work as an inhibitor of irregularities.

Today, communication with Inmetro is limited. The consumer needs to enter the website of the municipality and contact the Ombudsman’s office. “How many people do that?” he asks.

The changes come after President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) had, about two years ago, exonerated the previous management of Inmetro for seeing excessive intervention in devices used by taxi drivers, after carioca drivers complained that they would have to change the devices.

“We don’t have to disturb the lives of others, it’s to make life easier for those who produce,” Bolsonaro said at the time.

The president of Inmetro, however, says that the changes being implemented began to be studied before the episode, precisely by the previous team and that it was “imploded” by Bolsonaro.

The difference with the new management, he says, is that companies participated more in the process of formulating the regulatory framework.

The launch of Inmetro’s regulatory model is scheduled for next Friday (25) and the ceremony should be attended by Bolsonaro and Minister Paulo Guedes (Economy).