Letter
from Lhasa, number 278. O Brasil Privatizado
by
Roberto Abraham Scaruffi
Biondi, A., O Brasil Privatizado. Um balanço do desmonte
do Estado, Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil, 2003.
(Biondi 2003).
Aloysio Biondi
It is actually the same
text published in April 1999. The author died in July 2000.
This Brazilian story of
privatizations is similar to other privatizations in the world where State
companies were sold with substantial losses. The mechanism is easy. The company
is heavily refunded before being sold. Immediately later, it is sold and bought
at a super-sale price, considerably inferior even to the recent previous
refunding. Companies are bought with very favourable banking credits sometimes
even totally covering the paid price. Sometimes companies even have cash
permitting to pay with it the price to be paid for buying them.
Everything is formally
regular. A seller. A buyer. It is only that, behind formal regularity, an
immense predation against State is operated with the active cooperation of the
same State, alias of those managing
and representing it. In this way, the State/government (federal or ‘local’;
Brazil is a federal State) makes gift of enormous amounts of funds to private
oligarchies so wasting taxpayer money.
In addition, cheap
credit is assured to the buyer from State-controlled banks so that it could
eventually buy without spending its own money, so even without money, more
precisely with the same money of the seller. I give my (people’s) money to you
for allowing you to buy my own (people’s) properties! It is a classical
predation. ...Finally, those who have property right certificates write
history...
In Greece, there were
cases of public companies bought from people without money, using part of the
cash of the bought company for paying the price for buying it, and immediately
later closing the company. In various countries, there are also cases of
companies bought at very cheap prices and a bit later sold, eventually to
foreign companies, for a multiple of the original price.
One may suppose
(frequently there is also clear evidence, if one wants to see it) that a small
percentage of these predations goes back from the apparent profiteers to the
politicians and State bureaucrats having realized such ‘splendid’ businesses. Taxpayers
pay while private and ‘public’ oligarchies predate public funds.
Not only there are
restructurings, what is frequently inevitable, before and after the
privatization. Despite that, prices and tariffs generally are substantially
increased already before the privatization. One may suppose that that be done
in agreement with the incoming buyer, even if a company is officially sold ‘on
the marker’. However, generally, imaginary anonymous markets do not exist. It
is frequently known who the buyer will be. Not everybody can buy big companies
and with private and public banks’ credits. Finally, even the quality of the
provided services frequently deteriorates.
Even if public companies
were mismanaged and subsidised, it is a curious way of privatizing.
Privatization became everywhere (in the less developed areas, with weak States)
a slogan for covering a massive predations. Certainly, States/government cannot
well manage companies are even less able to profitably sell them.
That was what happened
in Brazil too, specifically at the end of the 1990s, on initiative of the
government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. That is well evidenced from the
(Biondi 2003) detailed exposition, firstly published in April 1999, so covering
the previous period.
The technique was the
usual one: people brainwashing about the advantages of privatizations and the
new happy era they would have opened, a long list of clamorous lies, absence of
whatever State/government control on the privatized companies although legally
possible and absolutely appropriate when they are public services, companies
sold without any real payment and with great profits for the buyers.
Anglophone
States/governments privatised at market prices expanding popular capitalism.
Comprador and para-comprador areas made gifts at advantage of the predations of
private oligarchies, and of State/government bureaucracies and corrupted
Statesmen and politicians which equally profited from the privatizations’ great
feast.
The author seems to
idealize Italian privatizations, perhaps focusing only on the appearance of
some one of them. Also Italian privatizations were a big predation. Some
pseudo-popular-capitalism ‘privatizations’ were realized only for companies de facto kept under State control. Little
shareholders have no control on them. Big shareholder remained
State/government. In addition, there were not only the official privatizations
but also the super-sale of the vast real estates of public institutes,
including the Social Security ones so now the pension funds are without any
real cover. Real estates guaranteeing them do not exist anymore, not even the cash
from their selling because it was used for facing State/government ‘social’
interventions. What was before managed as in whatever insurance company became
a device facing current costs by current revenues. Capitalization disappeared
in predations. Consequently, there was a double big predation: public companies,
and public or para-public real estates, the former for oligarchic predations,
the latter also for the direct predation of politicians, trade unionists,
bureaucrats et similia.
According to (Biondi 2003),
Brazilian privatizations were totally disjoined from whatever industrial
policy. Government claimed that privatizations would have some constraints
about covering companies’ productions by certain quota of Brazilian
intermediate products. That does not seem a great industrial policy, even if
Brazilians seem incapable of conceiving anything more than that. Anyway,
perhaps fortunately, such engagements were not maintained. In Brazil, also
nowadays, there is an extended protectionism overall relatively to not
technological products. Its result is higher internal prices ‘for protecting
Brazilian industries’, commodities of the lowest quality and a Brazil without
any competitive sector, even less in whatever advanced industry. Of course,
that is not responsibility of predatory privatizations. Predatory
privatizations and the absence of real modernization policies are consequence
of such a regime, a State and a country, and of its people, although people behaviours
be determined from the quality or absence of quality of its oligarchies.
It might be useful to
recall that President Dilma Rousseff appreciated Fernando Henrique Cardoso for
his stabilization policies. Such privatizations were part of such
‘stabilization’. If Brazil is universally [from the Empires] ‘appreciated’ it
is only because it is a comprador area which will never really develop. It is
backward in everything, and without any sign of recovery, although with media
brainwashing Brazilians obsessively telling them that they are a world power.
Biondi, A., O Brasil Privatizado. Um balanço do desmonte
do Estado, Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil, 2003.
