The Brazilian Post and Telegraph Corporation (ECT) is willing to invest up to $150 million to buy a residual share of the equity capital of the concessionaire responsible for the operations of the future high-speed rail (HSR) between Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Campinas. This shareholding will be of no more than 5%, according to the CEO of ECT, Wagner Pinheiro.
The executive said that the state-owned company will not enter the HSR auction, which has the submission of proposals scheduled for August and the definition of income expected in September, with none of the consortia to be formed. The ECT’s entry into the business will be in character of strategic partnership, i.e. directly in the capital of the special purpose entity (SPE) mounted by the winning group. For this, however, there must be agreement between the parties. ECT imposes a condition: the guarantee of space for freight transport and express shipments in one or two coaches of the trains, especially during the night.
We have a willingness to enter shareholding, Pinheiro said, talking to reporters, on the anniversary of 350 years of ECT. This is a market (Rio-São Paulo-Campinas) that concentrates almost 50% of our daily handling of objects. And we have a lot of interest in this modal.
Pinheiro explained that ECT’s entry into the HSR will not be an imposition and must also interest the consortium that won the auction, but he insisted to point out an advantage for the future concessionaire. It will be assured of a demand in the short term, he stated. Even having shareholding, the state-owned company would normally pay for the shipping of packages.
ECT had studied their entry into the bullet train capital in the first attempt by the government to bid the project in 2011. Pinheiro said that, at that time, the planned investment by the state-owned company was from $100 million to $150 million. This tends to be kept now, but can still be changed, the executive pondered.
In addition to discussions about the HST, the state-owned company has a number of projects that should move forward in 2013, according to Pinheiro. One is the sale of insurance in Post Offices, eyeing the new middle class. Initially, we thought about life insurance, focusing on classes C and D. It is a part of the market where we works well. We are looking at the return on investment, because we want to be profitable and not generate any cost to the Treasury, but we also want to contribute to the expansion of the market.
Other plans involve creating a cell phone virtual operator – in which ECT buys minutes in wholesale from major companies in the industry and sells these minutes in retail – and studies for the privatization of the postal company of Portugal. The Portuguese government should announce the schedule in April for selling its Post Office company, according to Pinheiro.
In the second half, ECT plans to hire another 6,600 employees, mainly for operations of transshipment and sorting of letters and freight. The call will be for those approved in recent civil service examinations and still integrates the reserve records of the Post Office. It is also planned to perform a new civil service examination in the states where there is no reserve. The state-owned company has about 120,000 employees.
Seja o primeiro a comentar