Up to December 20, the Brazilian Secretariat of the Federal Revenue (RFB), is receiving suggestions to amend the Normative Instruction nº. 1,598, from December 9, 2015, related to the Brazilian Authorized Economic Operator Program (AEO) through Public Consultation nº 11/2017.

The objective is to simplify the AEO certification process and decentralize the competence to manage and carry out activities related to AEO certification and monitoring by performing corrections and improvements to some existing procedures.

As the main changes, considering the logic of the implemented system, there is the suggestion of excluding the AEO-F modality, but the program would continue using the denomination "Full", for marketing purposes. The AEO -Full (AEO-F) is characterized when the stakeholder in the logistics chain is certified as AEO-Security and AEO-Compliance Level 2 modality.

In addition, there is also the possibility of reducing the scope of compliance criterion, in order to streamline the certification process, while maintaining the quality of the work developed. As an example of what is being proposed is the extinguishing of the accounting analysis, once it is extremely generic, considering that there the necessary information is available through SPED. In addition, the QAA ceased to be a specific criterion and remained only as an operator self-assessment document, which should be delivered through the AEO System. With this, the QAA became a document focused on the self-assessment of the AEO applicant.

Another important change was the revocation of Article 7, bringing about the “Complementary Validation Report” (RCV) to discontinue. Moreover, the criterion "Document Verification Policy and Inventory Control" and "Merchandise Traceability" would be eliminated. Thus, in the explanatory statement of the mentioned Consultation, it was emphasized that despite the fact there are not a specific criterion, it is not mean that it should not be object of analysis. The responsible topic for these analysis concerning the AEO-C was the eligibility criteria - "Information Management". In this regard, it was clarified in the aforementioned explanatory statement that the possibility of tracing the operations of an AEO is its great differential which ensures a higher control at the moment after the customs clearance.

Furthermore, it was proposed to change the name of the criterion "Foreign Exchange Operations" to "Foreign Exchange Control". As justification, the term "exchange control" is broader than foreign exchange operations. Considering that the AEO focuses on processes rather than on operations, as what is sought is the control of this work process to manage possible risks involved.

It was also proposed the reduction of scope in the analysis of the AEO-C modality through the exemption of analysis of some criterion. This was supported by the logic of two relevant points. The first is related to historical analysis, and based on it, it is possible to be aware of ​​the main problems detected in the background of a company and identify the topics with the highest risk. The second point, would refer to the extractions of data, carried out by the certification team, from the customs operations conducted by the company. In the case of a company that does not operate with indirect operations or has a very reduced number of operations, for example, it would not be recommended to have a large amount of energy in this criterion.

As conclusion, the changes have a main focus on simplifying and accelerate the process of verification of operations and, as a result, enable debureaucratization of procedures, being based on legality, reasonability and in the first instance on logic, according to the recurrent justification in the mentioned consultation. Such corrections have been made possible by the experience with the previous phases of AEO implementation, which have enabled the learning and now became possible the improvement of the Program to a next stage, being more dynamic and focus on compliance with the best practices in foreign trade that the AEO intends to certificate.