“Never time to play with Portuguese money. Infusion of public funds [na TAP] it was out of the question,” former Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications Sergio Monteiro told the parliamentary committee on economics this Friday, where he clarified the TAP privatization process in 2015. The Passos Coelho government was reluctant to invest in TAP because “a public injection is always accompanied by pain, money, wage cuts and worse living conditions. Therefore, privatization was extremely important,” Sergio Monteiro said. The former secretary of state explained that TAP owed Galp for fuel, airport charges to ANA, and small suppliers.
In any case, Sergio Monteiro recalled that the TAP privatization process was carried out in accordance with the framework law, which has its own rules and framework, including preliminary independent assessments. The former ruler explained that an independent commission had been appointed to oversee the process. At that time, invitations were issued to more than 40 organizations, mainly aviation, from Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the Middle and Far East. But only eight agreed to sign a confidentiality agreement and only three were “genuinely interested.”
What is certain is that the government chose the “harder route” because it denied what all competitors wanted, namely the purchase of the company’s air transport only, as was the case with Lufthansa and Iberia. According to Sergio Monteiro, the maintenance business in Brazil has never been a “strategic asset” but a “cash influx”. “If we took the easy way, we would only privatize profits. We abandoned this route out of respect for the Portuguese.”
TAP Executive President Christine Urmier-Widener will be heard on April 4 in another parliamentary committee to investigate TAP’s current leadership.
Author: Thiago Rebelo
Source: CM Jornal
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