New food stamp rules will generate competition in a R$90 billion market, says ministry

While preparing the regulation of new rules for food stamps, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security states that the changes should open up the market and encourage the entry of new companies in the sector, which moves R$90 billion a year.

The folder defends the changes, which have generated fears among specialized companies and restaurants.

Bruno Dalcolmo, executive secretary of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, says that the changes are necessary because companies use tax benefits without guaranteeing nutritional quality for employees and also because the instrument has heavy fees, putting pressure on costs for the employees themselves. worker.

“It is an absolutely vertical market, which brings supermarkets and restaurants to their knees,” he says to sheet.

Dalcolmo says that the rules of the benefit were never analyzed in depth over 45 years of existence and that the changes were debated in dozens of meetings with companies in the sector.

The new rules were announced in a decree this month and are aimed at the legislation of the so-called Worker’s Food Program (the PAT), created in the 1970s to guarantee a minimum of meals to those who were mainly part of the country’s construction sites.

Over time, the private initiative has adapted to the rules and has generated specialized companies such as Alelo, Sodexo and Ticket (which the government calls “tickets”).

“The program was developed back there so as not to leave the worker hungry, but today it is different”, says Dalcolmo.

“People are looking for nutritional quality, for health issues, such as coronary heart disease, blood pressure and obesity. But nobody looks at it today, the company makes a contract with a ticket and washes its hands,” he says.

Dalcolmo claims that the problems arising from poor nutrition affect the country’s activity, even reducing the productivity of workers. “The volume of economic losses is brutal”, he says.

With the decree, the government requires that companies that use the PAT “must have programs designed to promote and monitor the health and improve the food and nutritional security of their workers”, with a format to be jointly established by the Ministries of Health and Work.

On another front, the government intends to encourage the entry of new companies that operate the benefits.

One of the measures with the greatest impact for the sector is the prohibition of the so-called rebate — a discount that the so-called tickets offer contracting parties on the face value of the benefits.

Dalcolmo says that, in order to get business with companies with a large number of employees, the tickets provide, for example, R$ 100 in benefits to the worker, but only charge part of this from the company (R$ 90, for example). In general, the ticket with the highest discount wins the contract.

In the government’s view, this creates problems in the program because the losses from this negotiation will be compensated by charging fees to the restaurants — which, in turn, end up passing on such costs to the workers who consume there.

“Different types of fees are charged. There is the annual fee, the system usage fee, the machine fee. Restaurants are hostages,” he says. “[E o custo] it goes to the small restaurant, which will pass it on to all workers, those who use the voucher and those who don’t,” he says.

According to the decree, companies now “cannot demand or receive any kind of discount or imposition of discounts on the contracted value”. Failure to comply will generate exclusion from the PAT.

The government also established in the decree that the worker may ask the employer for the free portability of resources from one payment provider to another.

In addition, the text provides that payment operators allow the sharing of their accredited network for transactions of other brands — the so-called interoperability.

Companies have a period of a year and a half to adapt to changes in most rules. With that, the government says it hopes there will be new companies disputing the market.

“We are reorganizing and introducing competition in a market worth R$90 billion”, says Dalcolmo, citing as an example the interest of companies like iFood.

“At the regional level, there are several that operate locally and the rules open up a set of enormous possibilities. With interoperability, a company can be born in one day and the next day have access to the entire network accredited by other institutions”, he says.

Specialized companies have complained that the decree tightens food stamps, but leaves out food stamps — an instrument created in the 2017 Michel Temer (MDB) government labor reform and which can be used by companies to circumvent the rules.

Dalcolmo says that the companies’ demand for regulation of the instrument was made at the end of several discussions conducted by the government and that it was not possible to meet the request through the decree.

“I cannot impose a restriction via decree if there is no such legal provision. This can only be done via law,” he says.

When contacted, the ABBT (Brazilian Association of Worker Benefit Companies) —which represents companies such as Alelo, Sodexo and Ticket— did not comment on the executive secretary’s speech. Speaking last week, she had regretted that the decree had not included food stamps and said that companies have been exploiting the instrument in an irregular manner.

Paulo Solmucci, CEO of Abrasel (Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants), says that the entity agrees with part of the changes, such as interoperability —but not with others, such as portability, which would stimulate the “cashback” market (reward in cash) to attract customers and thereby transfer costs to merchants.

Among the main concerns, however, is the lack of regulation of food stamps. For him, the problems seen so far in food stamps would continue to be observed in the new instrument, boosting costs for restaurants.

“Businesses are moving at a very fast speed [para o auxílio-alimentação], is taking frightening dimensions. So, instead of the problem being solved, it is being aggravated”, says the president of Abrasel.

Solmucci demonstrated that he had influence over President Jair Bolsonaro (no party) by being one of the main articulators of a program to help entrepreneurs so that there would be no layoffs during the pandemic — which resulted in the Emergency Program for the Maintenance of Employment and Income.

Through the measure, companies could cut wages or suspend employment contracts temporarily, and the Treasury provided assistance to affected employees.

For Solmucci, waiting for the change to restrict food stamps to be made by bill could take months or even years. Therefore, he advocates that the government issue an MP (provisional measure) to resolve the matter as soon as possible. “Either we do it via MP or there will be a brutal distortion”, he says.