* By Jamile Sabatini Marques
The debate on financing public projects often focuses on the idea of resource scarcity. However, when seriously analyzing the budgetary scenario and available opportunities, it becomes clear that the main bottleneck for Brazilian cities is far from being a lack of money, but rather the difficulty in structuring robust, technically defensible projects aligned with the legal, environmental, and fiscal requirements that will intensify from 2026 onwards. What we hear from public budget experts points to this diagnosis: well-formulated proposals have a path, have instruments, and find sources of funding. The problem is that few meet the necessary consistency standard.
There are resources allocated to urban innovation, sustainability, digital infrastructure, energy efficiency, and service modernization. There are calls for proposals, credit lines, and federal mechanisms that remain underutilized due to a lack of projects mature enough to meet the requirements. The budget welcomes good ideas; it rejects poorly structured ones. That's why 2026 is shaping up less as a year of new resources and more as a year of new technical responsibility. The digital transformation of cities, for example, advances effectively when the proposal presents clear impact estimates, adherence to national guidelines, environmental viability, execution capacity, and minimum governance. Innovating requires complying with legal procedures—and complying with them thoroughly.
This finding highlights an increasingly clear and promising perception: technology, public management, and financing have the potential to generate much greater impact when they work in an integrated way. The partnership between ABES and Caixa reinforces precisely this understanding. It is about fostering innovation while strengthening the connection between those who finance, those who formulate, and those who execute. Caixa has the instruments, experience, and budget; the technology ecosystem has mature solutions capable of generating impact; municipalities have urgent demands that depend on adequate structuring to reach the planning stage. When these three sides meet, ideas go from intention to fundable initiatives.
What 2026 demands of public managers is technical clarity. Data-driven mobility projects, technology-supported security improvements, administrative modernization, digital infrastructure, and environmental policies cease to be abstract desires and begin to require precise formulation. They need to be rigorously constructed: well-defined costs, performance indicators, feasible timelines, alignment with the Multi-Year Plan, maintenance estimates, and verifiable impacts. The logic is simple: those who present a good project have access to resources; those who do not remain trapped in the perception that "there is no money.".
In this context, ABES acts as an essential facilitator. We offer qualified support that enhances access to financing. We connect technology-leading companies with municipalities that need solutions; we connect managers to financial instruments they are unfamiliar with; we help transform intentions into proposals and proposals into execution. The future of Brazilian cities, therefore, will be defined less by the amount of resources available and more by their ability to formulate well-structured, sustainable, and fiscally responsible projects.
*Jamile Sabatini Marques, Director of Innovation, Development and Research at the Brazilian Association of Software Companies (ABES)
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
Article originally published on the GUIA DO PC website: https://www.guiadopc.com.br/artigos/55832/financiamento-para-2026-projetos-robustos-abrem-caminho-para-investimentos.html
