Petrobras would be privatized if Bolsonaro were re-elected president, says former minister

The former Minister of Mines and Energy in the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), Adolfo Sachsida, confirmed that he was conducting studies to privatize Petrobras, and that the state-owned company would be sold within a year and a half if the former president was re-elected to another mandate.

The privatization would be carried out in a format to generate competition in the Brazilian oil and gas sectors, and would also involve Pré-Sal Petróleo S/A (PPSA), which was already in a more advanced process. The privatization of the deep water oil extraction company would be through a bill that had already been sent to Congress to sell the 30-year receivables that would yield around R$ 390 billion.

Sachsida says that the sale of Petrobras began to be studied amid the discussion of high fuel prices, in mid-May last year, and that one of the few solutions to lower the value would be to generate market competition through the privatization of the state-owned company. .

“He promptly said: ‘go ahead’. I asked: ‘I have your okay?’. He stated: ‘has’. The next day, before I took office in the ministry, I wrote what I was going to say about this issue in my speech and went to show it to him. Before I could say what it was, he already said: ‘Sachsida, you have my trust’. I insisted: ‘No, President, this is serious, and I’m going to read it to you. what am I going to say. I want to know if I can say that we are going to start studies for the privatization of Petrobras’. Then he replied: ‘You can do it and we’ll go ahead’”, said Sachsida in an interview with the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo published this Thursday (13).

The former minister said that he had a green light from Bolsonaro and that depending on the “political arrangement” and the understanding he had with the former president until the end of the government, the state-owned company would be privatized in a second term. “So much so that she was touched, it wasn’t just lip service”, he added.

According to him, the first step was to ask the then Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, to begin studies on the privatization of Petrobras and PPSA and include it in the Investment Partnership Program (PPI).

“But now, everything has changed. President Lula (PT) determined the exclusion of Petrobras, PPSA and six other companies, such as Correios, EBC (Empresa Brasileira de Comunicação) and Serpro (Federal Data Processing Service), from the PPI”, said Sachsida .

Debt could rise without privatization and with new investments

Adolfo Sachsida also said that in addition to barring increased competition in the national oil and gas market, the government’s decision to withdraw Petrobras from the PPI and abandon the practice of the “import parity price” will lead to an “increase in excessive” in the debt that has been reduced since 2019.

This will affect profitability and reduce dividends, especially those destined for the government, which is the company’s main shareholder. In just BRL 2022, Petrobras paid around BRL 100 billion in dividends to shareholders, which Minister Rui Costa, from the Civil House, considered a “disservice to the nation” and compared the company to “Santa Claus distributing toys at the end of the year”.

Sachsida points out that the best thing for the country would be to “deconcentrate the sector, bring competition and reduce State intervention in the economy”, in criticism of the possible resumption of investments in refineries, which had been suspended after an agreement with the Administrative Council for Consumer Protection (Where).

“The current government is not only contesting the agreement with Cade, to try to keep the current refineries, but also intends to build new refineries. I respect those ideas, but I disagree with them.”