creativity takes jobs to areas with restrictions

Piraquara is a municipality in the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba that has almost all of its territory occupied by springs or areas of environmental preservation. Restrictions create economic obstacles: the city is home to about 1% of Paraná’s population, but accounts for only 0.13% of value added in Paraná’s industry, well below the average of neighboring municipalities. Even with these limitations, Piraquara managed to increase the number of formal employees in the last decade. The path followed was to encourage entrepreneurship.

A study released by Sebrae in April 2023 argues that Brazil’s economic growth is linked to the success of microenterprises, which create more jobs and “destroy” fewer vacancies than larger companies.

To identify the places where the promotion of entrepreneurship generated more jobs between 2011 and 2021, the People’s Gazette made an exclusive survey of data in the Annual List of Social Information (Rais) of the five major regions of the country. A ranking was made based on formal vacancies in micro-enterprises – commercial or service establishments with up to nine employees or industries with up to 19 employees. The good practices adopted in these places are portrayed in the series “Where to undertake has time”published throughout this week.

Among the municipalities of South region, the subject of this second article in the series, Piraquara was the seventh that most expanded job vacancies in microenterprises. In 2011, there were 1,474 formal employees in establishments of this size. In ten years, the number grew 35%, to 1994.

According to Weliton Perdomo, manager of the East Regional of Sebrae/PR, the city of 116,000 inhabitants stands out for having two Entrepreneur Rooms, offices that provide guidance and assist in the legal procedures of micro and small companies. “Some municipalities of much larger size have only one point. The fact of having a physical service space encourages formalization, in addition to providing assistance, because even those who register CNPJ and do not fulfill their obligations are not really entrepreneurs”, he observes.

The Entrepreneur’s Room is a Sebrae project with reach throughout Brazil, but it depends on the initiative of the local city government to have a service location and provide employees for training and assistance.

Perdomo points out that since it came into effect, in 2006, the General Law for Micro and Small Businesses (LGMP) provides for various mechanisms to encourage businesses of this size, but that the way and intensity in which this is done depends on local actions.

“We know that the gateway to undertake is to be MEI [microempreendedor individual]. In Brazil, the average is 55% MEIs among all CNPJs. In Piraquara, that number is 66%”, he says. “The person looking for a room arrives with the need to undertake and leaves with a training course, education and information. All this support comes from Sebrae, but it depends on how the municipality sees the issue of development. The partnership with Sebrae depends a lot on the public manager”, she explains.

Perdomo also highlights the rules on local purchasing power, also provided for in the LGPM, which seeks to favor small companies in bids. “The biggest company in small municipalities is usually the city hall, which has the most capacity to hire and buy. It is necessary to encourage local businessmen to formalize themselves to meet the needs of purchases and provision of services and provide a local purchasing office to prepare for bidding. In this way, the municipality’s resources remain in the city”, says the Sebrae manager.

Often, the municipality does not depend on itself to create a favorable environment: neighboring cities compete for investments by granting reductions in the Service Tax (ISS) rates, for example. Even so, there are ways to strengthen natural vocations and boost the local economy, evaluates Perdomo.

The cooperative Trentina, from Piraquara, was born and expanded precisely from the territorial restrictions of the city. Due to the construction of the Piraquara 2 water dam, inaugurated in 2008, many lands were flooded. In return, the sanitation company Sanepar installed an agro-industry in the rural area, which was transferred in 2011 to the Cooperative of Food Processing and Solidarity Family Agriculture of Piraquara – Copasol Trentina.

Today, 130 cooperative members make food preparations such as jams and focus on the production of milk and milk drinks sold for school lunches. The milk plant has five employees, and another three work in the office. Among them is Thamyris Piaceski, 35, an administrative assistant. “I’ve been here for five years, I stopped for about three years before starting at the cooperative, but now I’m majoring in Human Resources Management, which includes Project Management, and I want to continue growing together with the cooperative”, she says.

One of the cooperative members who supplies milk to Trentina is Cesar Setti, 58, who owns a farm in Piraquara. The entrepreneurial path taken by him was motivated by affection. To recreate the cheese made by his mother decades ago in Pato Branco, in the southwest of the state, Setti sought family memories, training and certification to make an artisanal product.

Vó Vidinha cheese is made on a small scale, in the intervals between Setti’s professional commitments, who is a journalist and presenter. But the production is already recognized: it is part of the Paraná Cheese Route, structured by the Institute of Rural Development of Paraná (IDR-PR) based on cheese dairies regulated by a health inspection system.

The Cheese Route is part of a project to encourage rural tourism carried out by IDR-PR, another entrepreneurial option for small municipalities. Setti says that, in addition, Agroindústria Vó Vidinha has been indicated by the Agricultural Development Agency (Adapar) as a model for implementing, designing and good practices in milk production and adding value to the product.

“When I appreciate or inspect a colonial cheese by Vó Vidinha, I feel the sensation and the same flavor of the artisanal cheese that she made when I was a child, in Pato Branco. The process and care continue in Piraquara, now available to lovers of the true taste of milk”, he says.

Also in the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba, but south of the capital, is another municipality with accelerated growth in employment in small companies: Fazenda Rio Grande, with 103.7 thousand inhabitants.

The number of contracts in small establishments rose 43% in ten years, from 2,849 to 4,063. The municipality took advantage mainly of the logistical access and the favorable territorial area for the installation of companies, which no longer find available physical space in the capital. Fazenda Rio Grande corresponds to 0.9% of the population of Paraná and 0.6% of the value added in the industry of the state.

Where employment grew the most in microenterprises in the South between 2011 and 2021 (source: Rais/MTE and IBGE):

Real estate sector boosts employment on the coast of Santa Catarina

The municipalities in the South Region with the highest growth in the level of employment in small companies are in Santa Catarina and are concentrated in the coastal region. At the top of the ranking is Itapema, where the number of formal jobs in small establishments rose from 4,783 in 2011 to 7,355 in 2021, a jump of 54%.

The economic growth of the north coast of Santa Catarina was driven by the largest cities in the region, Florianópolis and Balneário Camboriú, which, without territorial space to grow, ended up stimulating enterprises in nearby cities.

In Itapema, however, there are projects for development to occur in a more orderly and sustainable way, says the president of the Business Association of Itapema and Porto Belo (Acita), Estevão Guerreiro.

“The city began with growth driven by Balneário, but over the years there has been understanding and articulation by civil society to escape seasonality. Today there is a predominance of investors and people wanting to live here, enjoy the quality of life, ”he says.

Itapema maintained the profile of low-rise buildings along the waterfront, but allowed for large buildings on the inner blocks. Civil construction became the engine of the local economy. “But Itapema learned from the mistakes of neighbors and the areas of the city that are growing are very opportune”, says Guerreiro.

According to him, the regulations on construction potential, which allow builders to invest more with the respective payment to a local infrastructure fund, have been used to handle structuring projects. “This brings a large number of liberal professionals, accountants, brokers, doctors and dentists to the city, all ready to provide services, to consume”, he observes.

To give sustainability to the businesses opened with an eye on the city’s growth, the trade association has partnered and launched training courses.

“This is the biggest challenge we face in all cities in Brazil in the business sector. In the 1980s, the vast majority, perhaps 90% of people, reported to a boss. Today there is a yearning to undertake. As a trade association, we undertake an entrepreneur’s journey, with various topics such as accounting, legal, financial, people management, leadership, marketing and branding, since all this is part of the entrepreneur’s daily life and one cannot give up any of these topics”, evaluate.

This is the second report in the series. “Where to undertake has time“, which shows the good practices of the municipalities where employment in microenterprises has grown the most in the last decade.