BE coordinator Mariana Mortagua said this Saturday that there is no reason to sell TAP now that the company has been saved by taxpayers’ money and the sacrifice of its workers.
“Taxpayers paid to save TAP, TAP workers paid to save TAP with their salaries, with their sacrifices. TAP makes a profit. What is the reason for transferring these profits to a private investor? Now that the company has been saved, now that it is working, why privatize it,” asked Mariana Mortagua.
The BE coordinator reacted this way when he learned of the news published today that TAP is worth just over a billion euros, representing about a third of the funds invested in the company by the Portuguese state.
TAP is estimated to be worth just over one billion euros, representing 31% of the €3.2 billion taxpayers have invested in the Portuguese airline.
Mariana Mortagua, who spoke to journalists while visiting several tourist resorts on the Alentejo coast, between Troy and Melides, also recalled the Prime Minister’s speech “talking about the Portuguese caravels, the need to protect TAP’s strategic interests and property.”
“There is no reason to sell TAR. And it is necessary to stop this compulsion that governments, as well as the government of the Socialist Party, have to block and put up for sale everything that is common property. Portuguese and those living in Portugal,” he concluded.