Brazil’s Acting President Michel Temer will prioritize infrastructure concessions this year as a way to showcase an improving political environment and rule of law, before offering stakes in state companies in 2017.
Several highways and airports are almost ready to be put up for tender. Such deals are less controversial than those involving strategic assets, like units of oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, according to a Temer aide who participates in key policy discussions. Temer’s team is also identifying regulatory improvements needed to pave the way for asset sales, said the aide, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public.
Amid the impeachment trial of President Dilma Rousseff and the worst economic recession in over a century, the Temer administration will need more time to structure asset sales and reassure investors wary of years of market volatility and a heavy government hand in the economy, the aide said.
Among the assets that may head for the auction block are Petrobras’s oil and gas unit Transpetro, as well as state airport operator Empresa Brasileira de Infra-Estrutura Aeroportuaria, or Infraero. The company’s stake in recently auctioned airports, including Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos, could be spun off separately, according to the government aide.
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