Privatization of Brazilian data holders faces snags and widespread criticism

In the 2018 election, Brazil’s financial elites came out in force to back far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, believing that his choice of Chicago School economist Paulo Guedes as finance tsar would lead to four years of ultra-liberalism studded with a series of privatizations.

With less than 15 months remaining in the government’s term, Messrs. Bolsonaro and Guedes have very little to show for themselves with regard to their ultra-liberalist promises. Any major privatization plans have been sluggish and difficult to get off the ground, as has been the case of Dataprev and Serpro, two of Brazil’s largest state-owned IT companies.

Included in the government’s privatization program in January of last year, Dataprev and Serpro are no nearer to being sold to the private sector, with the Economy Ministry delaying its timetable once more. Technical studies for the three-phase plan to auction off the IT firms are now only expected to be concluded by Q2 2022, meaning the sale itself is unlikely to take place before 2023, after the presidential elections.

Indeed, while the government has not explained the reasons behind its latest delay, experts point out a complete lack of justification for selling off Dataprev and Serpro, which store private data on every single Brazilian citizen.

After being slated for privatization at the beginning of last year, it took...