Resumo

Investment in national infrastructure is of paramount importance to national development in that it seeks to mitigate deficiencies in strategic sectors. Originally, the government operated as the main executor of infrastructure projects. This model has been changed to allow the participation of the private sector, through several different instruments. In this scenario, in which the private partners receive incentives to seek other forms of financing, the issue of debentures may become an interesting source of funding for infrastructure projects.

The Brazilian government sought to increase private fundraising for financing infrastructure through Law No 12.431. The core of the research is whether the enactment of the law positively influenced the spreads on debentures issued after regulation? It investigated whether the incentive debentures provided cheaper financing for investment projects. Three specific objectives were formulated: If companies with incentive debentures used it more frequently? In the Brazilian crisis, was the funding increased in the incentive debentures? Did the sectors of the economy use the incentive debentures?

For Moll (2010), Rational Choice Theory proposes an explanation for intentional human actions. The agents seek to optimize their actions through an analysis of the costs and benefits of each alternative, seeking to maximize the usefulness of the results to be achieved with the decision. Thus, it assumes that for the same level of risk, the rational investor will choose the investment that presents the highest expected return (Assaf Neto, 2014). That is, with the same level of risk, the option that maximizes the investor's utility is the one with the highest expected return.

The research is classified as exploratory, experimental, quantitative and post-fact. Statistical data on debentures in Brazil were collected between 2012 and 2018. To test the public policy of tax benefits for incentive debentures, the spread was defined as the difference between the interest rate offered by the debenture and the interest rate offered by the most similar public security. H0: The average spread of the incentive debentures is less than the average spread of the debentures. H1: The average spread of the incentive debentures is not less than the average spread of the debentures.

For 26 companies, or 60% of the cases, the spread of incentive debentures in relation to government bonds was lower than that of non-incentivized debentures. The statistical t test, comparing the average spread of incentive debentures and non-incentive debentures, is 0.1094. For significance levels of up to 5%, the null hypothesis that the average spreads between the two groups are equal cannot be ruled out. As for the representativeness of financing through incentive debentures, it was found that about 30% of the funds raised by the companies analyzed were raised through incentive debentures.

It was observed that it was not possible to reject the hypothesis that the debentures encouraged and did not incentivize had the same average spread. It is evident that, the companies that launched incentive and non-incentive debentures, funding through non-incentive debentures was predominant, around 70%. This result supports the evidence of Pimentel, Peres and Lima (2011), who portrays that the Brazilian market is still incipient in comparison with other developed countries. In addition, during the economic crisis faced by Brazil, companies did not seek financing through incentive debentures

Pereira, T. R.; Miterhof, M. T. (2019). Debêntures de infraestrutura: qual fração do custo fiscal é transferida aos projetos?. Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social. Textos para Discussão – 143. Wajnberg, D.; Castro, E. C. (2016). Debêntures de projetos de infraestrutura: uma comparação entre as experiências brasileira e internacional. Revista BNDES, 46, 149-155. Pimentel, R. C.; Peres, E. F.; de Lima, G. A. S. F. (2011). O mercado de Debêntures e o Financiamento Produtivo no Brasil: uma Análise de Cointegração e Causalidade. Revista de Contabilidade e Organizações, 5(11), 4-22