A wave of privatizations announced by Brazilian President Michel Temer has fired up the stock market with hopes of economic renewal.
It is an impressive list, with 58 items ranging from the Congonhas aircraft terminal in Sao Paulo to big state-run energy utility Eletrobras and even the national mint, which produces banknotes and passports.
Throw in Temer’s decree, also unveiled this week, to scrap a huge Amazon reserve and allow commercial mining and there is the makings of an investment bonanza.
The Brazilian government hopes the windfall will finally put Brazil back on the financial map after two years of recession, investor flight and today’s double-digit unemployment.
Temer’s first priority is to solve a ballooning budget deficit and analysts say the privatizations stand to bring in about 40 billion reais (US$12.7 billion) by the end of next year, when Temer’s term finishes.
With political resistance strong against new taxes and major pension reform facing dilution, the government has been forced to get creative.
Temer’s close ally in government, Wellington Moreira Franco, called the plan a way of “confronting the problem of unemployment, revenues and a return of conditions” for growth.
Brazilian Minister of Economic Affairs Henrique Meirelles on Thursday said that the privatizations would bring reassurance that “the fiscal balance is being achieved.”
Sao Paulo’s stock market responded with euphoria.
Eletrobras shares rocketed 50 percent on Tuesday when the announcement for the utility was made, helping to boost the Bovespa index above 70,000 points for the first time since 2011.
However, doubts surfaced about whether the project would go as smoothly as hoped.
For Marcelo Caparoz, an analyst from RC Consultores, the government’s principal goal is to show it means business.
“The most important factor in these announcements is the signal the government is sending to the markets, giving them the incentive to identify [state-run] businesses with potential to be put into private hands,” Caparoz said.
However, the market’s reaction showed that investors were taken by surprise, indicating that the government acted speedily and maybe is not fully prepared, Caparoz said.
“Executing the plans could be problematic,” he said.
Resistance to the privatizations is already starting, much of it focused on the sale of Eletrobras, which has 233 power plants generating more than one-third of the country’s electricity.
Brazilian Senator Edison Loboa, from Temer’s PMDB party said he opposed selling a company with “a strategic function, which therefore should remain under state control.”
The government has tried to reassure critics, saying that under the plan it would retain a so-called golden share giving veto power over certain areas of the company’s activities.
However, trade unions are promising to oppose anything that leads to jobs cuts.
The privatization of Congonhas, among 14 airports on the list, is raising concerns that Infraero, the state company managing the facilities, will run into financial trouble.
Also hanging over Temer’s hopes are the elections in October next year to replace him and his own alleged corruption problems as the first sitting president to face a criminal charge.
“In the coming months attention will begin to focus on the candidates,” Caparoz said.
Markets will hope for someone in Temer’s mold, like Sao Paulo Governor Gerardo Alckmin.
However, former union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was president from 2003 to 2010, is looking for a comeback and he would be no friend of the privatizations.
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