Government wants to use money from the privatization of Eletrobras to contain electricity bills

The Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, said this Wednesday that the government can use around R$26 billion in advance of the privatization of Eletrobras to reduce Brazilians’ electricity bills or prevent them from increasing.

According to him, the matter was being discussed with the company and first there will be a new attempt to raise awareness among Eletrobras, of whom Silveira criticized the deadline for depositing the resources.

The amount, he said, will be used to pay interest on debts incurred in the last four years, during the pandemic and water shortages, which impacted the population’s electricity bill.

If negotiations do not progress, the minister said that a proposal will then be presented to Congress via Provisional Measure (MP) by next week:

“I will submit to Congress (in the MP) the possibility of us advancing these R$26 billion to minimize the impact on the tariff. It would be discounting these bonds that belong to the Union, are from the government, established in the Eletrobras Law, so that you pay off these debts in the financial market, which are the Covid Account and the Water Scarcity Account, which are paid at very high interest, around 12% to 13% per year, plus inflation. It’s very expensive,” said the minister, according to Valor Econômico.

The statements were made during the opening of the seminar “Mining and mineral transformation of strategic minerals for the energy transition”.