Endeavor

The data that compose the Entrepreneurial City Index of 2014 in the selected Brazilian capitals came from public sources, partnering companies, and a primary dataset that was collected from the interviews of nearly 4,000 people. Apart from the main sources of these data, we sent to each of the 14 cities' town halls that were analyzed in this study a questionnaire that asked about: Entrepreneurial incen - tives by public purchases, tax exemption for investments, access to promotion assets, and capacity and support ini- tiatives. The answers, obtained at the municipal office, between May and August of this year, did not take part of the final ranking, but show a few of the initiatives taken by the City Hall to encourage entrepreneurship, which are summarized ahead. puBlIC purCHasEs Using mechanisms found within the General Law of Micro and Small Enterprises, various municipalities have recent- ly began to implement their own public procurement laws for micro and small entrepreneurs (MPE's), with exclusive biddings (with a total value of 80,000 Reais) and a mini- mum purchase percentage for MPE's. Even though these measures have been implemented by law, they still have trouble reaching most of the en- trepreneurs, especially due to the bureaucratic complexi- ties involved in purchasing processes and in the failure of communicating open biddings. It is also important to note that at the same time, the accountability of these purchas- es is still limited, given that most of the municipalities do not have an established evaluation system. In a sense, the City Hall of Recife and the Government of the Federal District (responsible for administering the cap- ital, Brasília) give good examples of actions that can be re- plicated. Both of these governments, after having regulat- ed the General Law, are creating portals of communication and supplier cataloging, that will work as purchasing and communication channels for governmental programs, as well as a place in which certain statistics of the companies that are involved will be disclosed. InCEntIvEs For InvEstmEnts Similarly to what happens with public purchases, many local governments provide benefits, through municipal tax cuts, such as the ISS, IPTU, and ITBI. The challenges, however, are also very similar: very little companies have access to those benefits, and in general, there is very little study on the impacts of these benefits. Furthermore, when Cities Halls possess some type of in - centive, it is usually linked to the ISS and is therefore made available only to a specific sector, usually one linked to 103

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