Trata-se, realmente, de uma boa análise dos economistas do Bradesco, rememorando as privatizações dos anos 1990, com seus valores atualizados.
Cabe registrar, apenas, que atualmente, e infelizmente, o governo não está exatamente privatizando totalmente os dinossauros estatais. Pressionado por problemas fiscais, o governo está apenas vendendo uma parte de suas ações, para fazer um pouco de caixa, em vista do enorme buraco orçamentário existente nas contas públicas.
A situação permanece extremamente grave, o que recomendaria uma retomada de privatizações, mas em escala verdadeira, ou seja, vendendo TODOS os dinossauros estatais, inclusive bancos e TODO o controle sobre as estatais do setor elétrico, e sobretudo e principalmente a Petrobras, para que ela nunca mais ela seja objeto de práticas predatórias de políticos corruptos. Afinal de contas, ninguém detectou participação significativa da Embraer ou da Vale nessa onda vergonhosa de corrupção lulopetista e do sistema político, não é mesmo?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
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Privatization, What’s Not Seen
BradescoBBI, August 24, 2017
Privatization is back in the news. As usual, we could investigate the impact of any asset sales from the fiscal finance point of view. But as we argue today, the effect is immensely and even incommensurably bigger on the economy. We analyze a few of these with an eye on the announcement made by the government regarding Eletrobras.
We also describe the complexities from a Congressional point of view of the political agenda in the near term, which could delay the process.
Brazil embraced one of the largest privatization programs in the world in the 1990s. The bulk of privatizations occurred after 1995 during the FHC presidency (a little over than US$10bn was captured under the Collor and Itamar Franco administrations, but were not relevant compared to what was to come). Indeed, it was the change in mindset that was all important: from the ‘national pride’ sentiment that many of these companies embodied during the so-called Economic Miracle, they gradually became a burden and frequently signaled the failure of the State to provide public services (lack of telecommunication services in the 1980s was emblematic).
Suddenly, much more motivated by (1) the pragmatic recognition of this failure, rather than a liberal/libertarian view of the world, (2) the positive impact on fiscal finances with the potential reduction of public debt, transfer of debt to the private sector with upfront revenue collection from the sales proceeds and (3) increased tax collection flows from privatized companies (some not even paying taxes), Brazil went ON SALE, big time, during the second half of the 1990s, raking in more than US$105bn (current nominal dollars) over about seven years.
The purpose, scope and magnitude of the privatization program in the 1990s was unique, probably only comparable to the post-Soviet era and Eastern Europe because of different reasons.
First, it is important to highlight some of the differences in macroeconomic backgrounds, starting with the magnitudes. Based on a very approximate calculation using today’s Reais, this would total around R$350bn according to our estimate (taking the BNDES’ information on the entire privatization program, ‘centering’ a date at Jun/1998 and then monetarily correcting this value for today’s Reais).
That is a lot of money. And it was an even bigger amount from the public finance perspective. Total net debt – a relevant debt concept at the time, since both the volume of reserves and BNDES liabilities were low – reached R$386bn in December 1998.
Apples to apples, or in US dollars, that US$105bn in privatization proceeds compared to a total net debt in dollars of US$319bn at YE1998. The volume of privatization proceeds was very relevant, to the point of representing – in this very rough comparison – one-third of the public debt during the period.’ Today, the Brazilian public debt totaled R$4.7tr as of June 2017, according to the gross debt concept (now more relevant). Under the net debt concept (which discounts debt owned by the federal government with other public-sector entities and reserves), the total is R$3.2tr.
No matter how we refine our numbers, in an approximate calculus in present value terms, the R$350bn we obtained as the total volume of privatization resources is equivalent to 7% of gross debt and 11% of net debt.
Before anyone points to a fair question: we are comparing apples to oranges since the remaining ‘privatizable’ companies are nowhere near that amount today. And that is exactly the first point we want to get across: selling SOEs today is not as potentially important to the public finances as it has been in the past, and for sure it will never be a panacea for massively reducing the stock of public debt.
Yet this does not reduce the government’s incentives to continue with these sales.
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