Tarcísio wants Sabesp to be sold by deputies in 2023 – 09/30/2023 – Panel

The Tarcísio de Freitas government (Republicanos-SP) is working with an ambitious schedule according to which the Sabesp privatization bill will be approved by the São Paulo Legislative Assembly in 2023. As a result, the sales auction would take place in the first half of the year. next year.

The calendar faces the reality of an allied base in the Legislature that is often disorganized and has difficulty approving much simpler projects.

The next step on this agenda is sending the bill to deputies, which should happen in October.

Another likely obstacle to the rapid approval of the project is the fact that state management will only define fundamental sales parameters in the first months of 2024.

Among them is the calculation of how much of the privatization resources will be used to reduce water and sewage bills and what the size of the tariff reduction will be. The minority shareholding percentage that the state will maintain in the company will also be decided.

The government states that a detailed and transparent explanation of the privatization mechanism should be enough for deputies to be convinced of the project’s viability, even if the values ​​are not broken down.

“We will treat everything with total transparency, as we are already doing in contacts with deputies and mayors. We believe that approval in the Assembly this year is possible”, says the Secretary of Environment, Infrastructure and Logistics, Natália Resende.

State management plans to inject R$66 billion in private investments to bring forward universal access to collected and treated water and sewage from 2033 to 2029.

“Privatization will improve the service, double the rate of investment, bring forward goals and have a strong social bias”, states Resende.

After the end of the so-called phase 1 of privatization studies — in which the sales models, the size of the government’s stake in Sabesp after privatization, tariff regulation and municipalities’ adhesion models will be defined —, the government intends to forward the sale, structuring the auction and holding a roadshow for international investors next year.

For the Tarcísio government, completing the sale in the first half of the year is also important to avoid insecurities that could arise from the 2024 elections.

In the capital, for example, the current mayor Ricardo Nunes (MDB) is in favor of privatization and has contributed to making it happen, but Guilherme Boulos (PSOL), his opponent, opposes the project and would pose difficulties to its development, if elected.

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