Today: Brazil tries to win back investors’ trust with infrastructure deals. The implications of the change at the helm of the Federal Police. And the possibility of private vaccine rollouts.
Infra Week: Brazil seeks to reclaim prestige
Brazil has made international headlines over the past year for all the wrong reasons, with the global press picking apart the country’s pandemic debacle and its apparently never-ending political crisis. Starting today, however, the government will try to drum up some positive news with its so-called “Infra Week,” consisting of a series of infrastructure auctions potentially raising up to BRL 10 billion (USD 1.8 billion) in investment.
- Between today and Friday, the Infrastructure Ministry will sell off 22 airports, five port terminals, and a stretch of railway connecting iron ore-producing regions to the coast. B3, the São Paulo stock exchange, will run the auctions.
Why it matters. This will be Brazil’s biggest sale of public assets since the November 2019 auction of the so-called “transfer of rights” offshore oil reserves. At the time, the Economy Ministry billed it as the “world’s biggest oil auction,” but it raised only 65 percent of the expected revenue.
- Infra Week will be a test of investors’...