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What counts for a company? Profits. Any expense that reduces profits goes against the interests of shareholders. That's the logic. And it seems that state-owned enterprises, when they are privatized, want even more to "show the service", to prove that they are much more "efficient" in the hands of the capitalists.
Tragedies such as those of Mariana and Brumadinho fall within this logic, even though we have governments (long ago, perhaps still, not today) that act as business owners. But I remember that some state companies have badumed many social responsibilities, such as paying for health and education systems in the municipalities where they worked.
By the way, when I see someone say that such a thing – I think that we must operate as a business: neglect everything that is social, ignore environmental issues , make the misfortune to reduce costs (dismissal of people, for example) and increase profits.
But I want to talk here about the privatization of Vale
FHC was still the finance minister of the Itamar government. When he spoke for the first time of the privatization of this symbolic business for Brazil, efficient and profitable, he knew that the vast majority of Brazilians would not agree. He then said that with the privatization of the company, valued at $ 120 billion, she would be able to pay the entire Brazilian external debt and therefore not to pay more interest , and that money would be converted into education, health, and so on.
many people who opposed it hesitated. "Well … If it's like that, it might be worth it." And many got used to it.
Already as president, FHC was talking privatization again. Only this time he talked about $ 60 billion. "Wow … halfway?", I asked other DCI reporters, where I was a sub-editor in economics. Many businessmen told the newspapers that 60 billion were very well paid. I asked a reporter to call each of those who had made these statements and asked him: if Vale were his, would he sell at this price? Everyone's answer has been called. It has been said that value matters little, that the value was to take ore production out of the state, that this was not a function of it.
Once again, critics were getting used to the new value. One day, another evaluation of the government: the privatization of Vale, he would have 30 billion. Half of the amount originally quoted! But that did not stop there. Some time later, it fell to 15 billion. And in the end "sold" for 3.2 billion! In addition, the "buyer" would only start paying in 5 years. And more: the government said it had no money to modernize Vale, but had lent to the company that had "bought" a billion dollars, which was also to start paying in five years . Even me, without a penny in my pocket, I could buy Vale this way, because in two years, at most three, I would have made more profits than that.
A few years later, Vale bought a much smaller Australian steel mill than this (of course) for $ 17 billion or $ 18 billion!
I must also remember that what has been given to the new owners is not only factories, factories. A total area of 351,723 square kilometers, greater than the sum of the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo, was part of the package as a search and extraction area. 411.9 thousand hectares only in the region of Parauapebas (Pará), where the Carajás mine is located. I read somewhere that the mineral reserves delivered to Vale as part of the privatization were worth $ 1.5 trillion. A trillion and a half !!!
Another possible comparison in this case: Germany has one of 357,300 square kilometers, is almost equal to the area on which Vale has the right to mine ores. Ask the German government if it would "sell" a mining concession from its territory to a company. And for 3.2 billion dollars!
Do you want to compare with other countries? The United Kingdom (which includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) extends over 242,500 square kilometers. Italy has 302 thousand square kilometers. As a result, the area allocated to Vale is much larger than the entire United Kingdom or Italy. And for $ 3.2 million, I repeat.
I also remember that at the time of the privatization auction in May 1997, there was an avalanche of lawsuits against privatization. It seems to me that there were about 180 (I could not find the right number). A supreme minister (I do not remember either) received these 180 or so lawsuits and I wondered how many years it would take, because a lawsuit in front of the STF took a lot of time. Well, he had the race on a Tuesday and said he could not deliver the result until Monday. And he did it. Did he have time to read a tenth of these questions? Still, the HCF government was very angry because it wanted to auction Friday. When you want, "justice" is fast, is not it?
In conclusion, one of the justifications for the whole process of pbading public enterprises to private capital was the reduction of the external debt and almost all the public debt. I know that money has evaporated and that debt (including external debt) has only grown. The FHC government has benefited from a privatization of $ 78.6 billion and the public debt, which stood at $ 78 billion in 1996, reached $ 245 billion in 2002, the government's last year of FHC.
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