President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) said this Sunday afternoon (15) that Petrobras will not set the price of fuel and hinted at a possible change in the state-owned company’s pricing policy.
“Nobody is going to set fuel prices or intervene in Petrobras,” he said during a motorcycle ride through various points in Brasília.
“What I think Petrobras could do, there is a constitutional article that talks about Petrobras’ social purpose. It is not being taken into account. International parity only exists in Brazil,” he added.
Bolsonaro was referring to the PPI (Import Parity Price), a price policy adopted by the state-owned company since the Michel Temer government that ties the sale price of oil produced by Petrobras to that practiced abroad.
The President of the Republic raised the possibility of changing this policy.
“The PPI is not a law, it is a Council resolution [de Administração da Petrobras]. If the Council thinks it has to change, it changes, but the population as a whole cannot suffer this barbarity because linked to the price of fuel is inflation and the purchasing power of the population is down there”, he said.
Also during the tour, in a stop to greet supporters, Bolsonaro said he would hold a meeting soon with the new Minister of Mines and Energy, Adolfo Sachsida, to be “100% aligned”.
When asked whether there would be new changes in the command of Petrobras, the president replied: “You ask Adolfo Sachsida, that Petrobras is directly linked to him and not to me”.
In his weekly live last week, Bolsonaro signaled that he could make new “people changes”, mentioning the company.
The departure of Bento Albuquerque from the portfolio weakened the position of José Mauro Coelho at the helm of the company, assess government officials heard by the Sheet.
On the motorcycle ride in Brasília earlier this afternoon, the President of the Republic avoided the topic and said that “all ministers have carte blanche” and that “Sachsida will certainly be a good minister.”
The price of fuel has become a problem for Bolsonaro’s electoral pretensions, who has been criticizing Petrobras’ policy for some time. Last week, he said that the company’s R$44.5 billion profit in the first quarter of this year is “rape” and “absurd.”
At the end of March, the President of the Republic made the second change in command of the company in his government. A little over a month later, he decided to replace the Minister of Mines and Energy.
On another front, Bolsonaro went to the Federal Supreme Court (STF) to try to force governors to lower the tax rate, which would partially alleviate the rise in fuel prices.
On Friday (13), Minister André Mendonça suspended in an injunction (provisional) clauses of a rule contrary to the law that established a single ICMS rate on diesel oil for all states, in reais per liter, charged only at the stage of production.
The state finance secretaries met this Saturday (14) to discuss how to reverse the problem.
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