Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT), who leads polls for voting intentions for next year’s presidential election, said on Tuesday (30) that he would change Petrobras’ current pricing policy and that the state government should make a profit for the Brazilian people.
“I say it loud and clear: we are not going to maintain this policy of rising prices for gas and gasoline that Petrobras has adopted because it has leveled out prices on the international market. The Brazilian people have to profit from Petrobras,” he said Lula in an interview with Rádio Gaúcha.
Questioned about the topic by analysts in New York, Petrobras’ management said that the company now has control instruments to avoid political interference in its management. “The company has total control over its destiny,” stated the company’s president, Joaquim Silva e Luna.
The rise in fuel prices in 2021 put Petrobras in the crosshairs not only of the opposition, but also of allies and President Jair Bolsonaro himself (no party), whose popularity has been affected by high inflation.
Bolsonaro has sometimes said that they want to privatize the state-owned company to stop taking the blame for the price of fuel. The opposition, in turn, criticizes the policy of monitoring international oil prices.
This Tuesday (30), for example, the FNP (National Federation of Oil Workers) announced that it will take to Congress this Wednesday (1) a dossier from the Petrobras Social Observatory that would prove that it is possible for the company to make a profit with another policy of prices.
“The current fuel pricing policy is a real exploitation of the population and stagnation of the economy”, said, in a note, economist Eric Gil Dantas, from the Observatory and the Brazilian Institute of Political and Social Studies.
According to his assessment, the current pricing policy “serves to increase the profitability of the state-owned company and serve the interests of shareholders.” In 2018 and 2019, he says, the company distributed the equivalent of 29% of adjusted net income. In 2020, the indicator jumped to 152% and, in 2021, it should be at 66%.
During a meeting with analysts in New York, Silva e Luna defended the pricing policy saying that there are no complaints about other commodities, such as soybeans and coffee, which are traded by private companies. As a state-owned company, he concluded, Petrobras is more subject to this criticism.
“It’s a way of doing politics with something that has nothing to do with politics,” he said, defending that fuel prices must follow market laws.
Lula’s statement raised concern among analysts, who asked about the topic more than once during the meeting, in which Petrobras’ management detailed the investment plan for the period between 2022 and 2025.
The company’s Governance and Compliance director, Salvador Dahan, cited a series of controls adopted in recent years that would make political interference more difficult, such as stricter rules for hiring executives, which prevent the appointment of people linked to political parties or those without experience.
He also recalled that today the Petrobras statute prohibits the company from approving investments or policies that generate losses. If the government decides to use it for public policies, the text determines the payment of compensation for the losses.
Among the concerns of analysts is the risk that a change in government will represent a setback in the current dividend policy, which provides for the distribution and use of surplus cash to remunerate shareholders.
Between 2022 and 2025, the state-owned company estimates it will distribute between US$ 60 billion and US$ 70 billion (R$ 336 billion to R$ 392 billion) in dividends.
“Of course, election year has pressures anywhere in the world,” said Silva and Luna. “But we don’t see any risk of not delivering. On the contrary, the moment we reach the optimal level of debt a year in advance, we make a commitment to our investors.”
The company’s Financial Director, Rodrigo Araújo, said he does not see great risks with the drop in oil prices after the appearance of the omicron variant, which has caused great fears about the recovery of the global economy.
“We are comfortable that we will be able to comply with the dividend policy even with a more challenging price scenario,” he said, noting that the company has limited its investments to projects that are sustained with oil at US$ 35 per barrel.
“We see low prices [à frente] but we don’t expect something as dramatic as we saw in 2020,” he concluded.
with Reuters
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