Among The Major Privatizations, Petrobras Is Completely Off The Table, But There Are 36 On The List For This Year
Brazil is pushing for major state-owned companies to privatize some subsidiaries, as the Brazilian government under new far-right President Jair Bolsonaro aims to raise US $ 20 billion from state asset sales in 2019. The state oil company Petróleo Brasileiro (Petrobras) is expected to sell most of its 36 subsidiaries, said Brazilian privatization secretary Salim Mattar at an investment conference held on Tuesday in São Paulo.
Mattar said that Petrobras’ subsidiaries and the banks Banco do Brasil SA and Caixa Econômica Federal should be privatized, as the government wants state-owned companies to sell many of their units within four years.
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Brazil also plans to privatize Eletrobrás through additional stock sales in the market, said the privatization secretary.
At state-owned Petrobras, new CEO Roberto Castello Branco – who was appointed in November by Bolsonaro to lead the company and officially take the reins in early January – had already advocated for a total privatization of Petrobras.
Since he was chosen to lead the oil company, however, Castello Branco has dismissed a privatization of Petrobras, but still wants to sell non-essential assets of the company to reduce its massive net debt of US $ 72.888 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2018. Petrobras is the most indebted publicly listed oil company in the world.
“The privatization of the company is not on the table. I do not have a mandate to think about that,” said Castello Branco in November.
Still, the sale of non-essential assets is expected to continue under Castello Branco, whose strategic vision for Petrobras includes “portfolio management, reducing capital costs, and relentless pursuit of cost reduction.”
Between 2016 and the end of October 2018, Petrobras vsold assets worth US $ 20 billion, sources said in October that the Brazilian state company could divest another US $ 20 billion in assets by 2019.

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