Ciro Nogueira rules out fuel subsidies for now

Minister Ciro Nogueira (Casa Civil) says that the government does not intend to change Petrobras’ pricing policy and says that the idea of ​​a subsidy to contain the price of fuel is, at the moment, discarded.

After days of deadlock, the government announced this Wednesday (6th) the third change in command of the company, by appointing José Mauro Ferreira Coelho, chairman of the Board of Directors of state-owned PPSA (Pré-Sal Petróleo SA) to the presidency of the oil company. ).

The minister said that the change was a decision by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), who expects more “transparency” in the communication of the company’s price policy. But he reinforces that the government’s intention is not to interfere in the company.

“It is a demagogic situation to say that the price of fuels is going to be in reais. Rice is in dollars, beans in dollars, alcohol is in dollars,” he told sheet. “Petrobras will continue to be totally independent,” he added.

Since the war in Ukraine put pressure on fuel prices and the state-owned company made a mega-increase in values, Bolsonaro began to criticize the company’s management and even suggested a change in price policy.

According to the Chief of Staff, the idea of ​​granting a subsidy was conceived in the scenario in which a barrel of oil reached US$ 200. Now, both the dollar and the price of fuel are falling, so the hypothesis is ruled out at the moment.

Despite Bolsonaro having made public statements signaling that General Silva e Luna – who will leave the command of the state-owned company – should review the mega-increase in fuel prices, the minister says that the pressure did not come from the president, but from the “streets”.

“It’s pressure from the streets, from the population that sometimes doesn’t understand how we are self-sufficient in oil and we have to stay with this dependence [de refinarias do exterior]”, he says. For Nogueira, the state-owned company fails in its communication and needs to better explain how the composition of prices that result in the final value of fuels takes place.

Asked what the president expects from Petrobras’ new management, he says: “To make this situation more transparent. I think Petrobras is very wrong in its communication, in explaining to society the components of the price”.

“[Tem que explicar] Who is charging and what people, when filling up their car, are paying”, he evaluates.

The minister also attributes the increase in fuel prices at the peak to the governors. According to him, state administrations have increased their collections on top of taxes they charge on top of the price of gasoline, for example.

“Unlike the federal government, which did not collect anything else, on the contrary, we gave up the collection, the state governments increased their collection by 36%. This was absurd and a crime that the governors committed against the Brazilian population.”

When criticizing the governors, Nogueira follows what Bolsonaro has been saying in recent months. The Planalto proposed a bill to Congress to reduce ICMS and zero PIS/Cofins on fuel — the text has already been approved by the Legislature.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy presented this Wednesday the names of José Mauro Ferreira Coelho to preside over Petrobras and Márcio Andrade Weber to command the state-owned company’s Board of Directors.

The names are part of an internal solution by the government, which has not found people from the private sector willing to fill the positions amid the president’s pressure on fuel prices. As a result, options already linked to public administration began to be discussed.

While Coelho is on the board of a state-owned company and has been through the MME (Ministry of Mines and Energy), Weber is on the board of directors of the oil company itself.