Financing Innovation in Brazil: the role of the Brazilian Development Bank

Resumo

This paper presents the role of the National Development Bank (BNDES), the main public development agency in Brazil, in financing technological innovation. The scarcity of financing for innovation has always been considered as a limiters to Brazilian technological development. And, given the characteristics of the innovative process, public funding plays a central role. Therefore, understanding the evolution of the role of the BNDES - one of the largest development banks in the world - in stimulating innovation is essential. Firstly, it presents a historical description of the Bank's activities, followed by a brief description of the measures to support innovation in Brazil over the last two decades. In the third section we discuss the evolution of BNDES as a financing agent for technological development, including the instruments offered by the institution and their reformulations over time. In the fourth section, the profile of innovation expenditures carried out by BNDES, according to their origin (instruments used) and destination (sectors and profile of companies supported), is evaluated. Finally, the fifth section presents the final considerations.

The differential of this article is to detail, for the first time, the participation of this relevant Brazilian institution in financing innovation. The analysis has an institutional approach: it does not present an impact analysis, but it allows the reader to understand the changes in the instruments and in the priorities that the institution has assumed in the last decades. This analysis is essential to understand the logic and evolution of the country's largest development institution.