October 5, 2021

10:10

Bruno Pacheco – from Cenarium

MANAUS – João Paulo Pacífico, activist CEO of the Gaia Group, responsible for raising R $ 17.5 million in the capital market, in an unprecedented operation that benefited seven family farming cooperatives of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), wants to finance projects of indigenous and quilombolas. In a post this Sunday, 3, on social networks, he talked about the desire to create new paths for the financial market.

“Many have heard about the MST operation, but we have already done other things, which I will tell you about here… And this is just the beginning… Believe me, we will create new paths for the financial world… and for society”, Pacífico wrote on Instagram.

The CEO recalls that, at the beginning of the year, he decided to form a dedicated team to make Gaia’s impact operations, and that his dedication would be 100% for this group. According to him, the choice was to have made a small, but aware and engaged team, and that would be able to use the tools of the capital market to transform lives.

“Usually, the financial market is harmful to society. Materialism and selfishness are very strong… but we need to change that! In the process of definitions and strategies, we were inspired by these two above. And the cool thing is that the transformation is happening… (even with some people rooting against it)”, he pointed out.

The result was the successful conclusion of the emblematic operation for the Brazilian capital market, which guaranteed the issue of Certificates of Agricultural Receivables (CRAs) for the cooperatives. To Folhapress, João Paulo Pacífico spoke about the magnitude of this R$ 17.5 million funding and highlighted that this was the first time that a social movement in Brazil accessed, on this scale, a capital that had not reached them. According to him, this resource was until then restricted to large companies.

“We made possible a financial instrument to the family agriculture cooperatives that came with all the necessary governance, which many people didn’t think would be possible”, highlighted Pacífico to Folhapress.

Investment

The Certificates of Agribusiness Receivables (CRAs) is a fixed income security emitted by securitization companies to finance activities in the agribusiness sector. The MST will have a prefixed rate of return on the CRAs of 5.5% per year, maturing in 2026. In all, around 1.5 thousand investors were able to invest in the certificates, and it is possible to buy the bonds starting at R$ 100.

The resources of the operation benefit, approximately, 13 thousand farmers. According to João Paulo Pacífico, the next step is to expand fundraising to other social movements and native peoples, such as indigenous and quilombolas.