Treasury considers new capitalization of the BNDES

The Treasury is considering a new capitalization of the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) later this year. The sum has not as yet been decided, but the intention is motivated by the fact that, even with the recent reinforcements, the reference asset portfolio of the bank is still not compatible with the prospective demand for the financing of major infrastructure projects such as the High Speed Train (HST).

The technical area of the bank has already finalized the structure of the credit facilities for the HST, but still depends on a solution that can find a balance between the size of the financing, which is less than R$ 20 billion, and the reference asset portfolio, which currently stands at R$ 60 billion.

As rules of the Central Bank, in the name of prudence, do not allow the BNDES to exceed the equivalent of 25% of the company portfolio in each operation, it would be necessary to raise the portfolio to R$ 80 billion or have the Treasury as the guarantor. One solution could be that of exchanging part of the BNDES debt with the Treasury for shares, as remains of the capitalization of Petrobras, but this would involve a tax cost.

Even though the share participations of the BNDES are concentrated in BNDESPar, the 139.75 million ordinary shares in Petrobras that the Government transferred to the Bank at the end of August have not been added to the portfolio of the participations subsidiary. The portfolio of BNDESPar has maintained 7.66% of Petrobras shares, but BNDES has also started to own a certain part, which is equivalent to 1.59% of the state company.

However, this participation has not been considered in the definite prospectus of the offer, unveiled last week, and which was drawn up prior to this operation. For this reason, the BNDES participation in Petrobras shall exceed the forecast of 11.8% suggested in the document. The loan of R$ 24.7 billion as approved by the Treasury the day before yesterday, so that the bank may pay for the state company shares, which is more than the R$ 22.4 billion as forecast, could be a sign of this trend.

In August, the shares transferred by the Union have injected funds totaling R$ 4.5 billion into the BNDES. In a new Decree signed on the 9th, the Government authorized the BNDES and the Federal Savings Bank (Caixa) which was also capitalized with shares, to exchange these papers for other public papers of the Sovereign Fund. This means that they could transfer the assets to FSB without losing capitalization.