The airports of Galeão and Santos Dumont, in Rio de Janeiro, will be auctioned to a single concessionaire in 2023, informed Thursday the Minister of Infrastructure, Tarcísio de Freitas. The announcement was made after the decision of RioGaleão, operator of Tom Jobim International Airport, to return the terminal concession to the federal government. The concessionaire released a note confirming that it submitted a request to the federal authorities for a re-bidding of the airport concession, as provided for in law 13.448, of June 5th, 2017.
The reason for the request, Valor found out, was the refusal of the National Civil Aviation Agency (Anac) regarding the request for the economic-financial rebalancing of the concession contract. The information was anticipated Thursday by “Capital” column of O Globo newspaper.
RioGaleão asked for a “complete” contract rebalancing, citing all the effects of the pandemic. The 25 years Galeão’s concession began in 2014 and extends until 2039. The operation is controlled by Singapore’s Changi, with 51%, and Infraero has the remaining 49%.
Changi took control of Galeão in 2017, when Odebrecht, implicated in Lava-Jato, left the venture. Initially, the Singaporeans had a minority stake in the control block led by the contractor at Galeão.
According to sources close to the discussions, Anac has been rebalancing the contracts annually, which, in RioGaleão’s view, does not provide stability to maintain the long-term operation. The return of the concession began to be analyzed after the negative of the technical area of Anac, in October 2021, about the rebalancing requested by the company.
At that moment, it became evident that RioGaleão would have to choose between litigation, which is costly and time-consuming, and a safer path from the legal point of view, which involves the request for a re-bidding. It is expected that the process of returning the concession will take two to three years to be concluded. RioGaleão will continue to be responsible for the operation until the re-bidding takes place, sources said.
The understanding of technicians is that RioGaleão cannot participate in the re-bidding process for the airport.
After the concessionaire released a statement confirming the request for re-bidding, Mr. Freitas called a press conference in Brasília, in which he stated that the preparation of studies to bid Santos Dumont airport separately “no longer makes sense”. “Devolution is an instrument applied to poorly modeled concessions, with contract problems. With the devolution, it no longer makes sense to conduct studies of Santos Dumont separately,” he said.
The minister said that for the second half of 2023, the eighth round of airport concessions will be structured, which should encompass Galeão and Santos Dumont. “This resolves a series of issues that were being raised by the productive sector in Rio,” said the minister. According to him, the bid for Galeão will follow the path of the airports of São Gonçalo do Amarante (state of Rio Grande do Norte) and Viracopos (São Paulo). He also said that RioGaleão will be reimbursed for unamortized investments.
Since taking over the airport in 2014, RioGaleão has invested R$2.6 billion in expansion works. These funds are part of a settlement of accounts that will need to be made between the concessionaire and the federal government since the concession was for 25 years, but only eight years have passed, an insufficient period to amortize all the investments made in the airport.
In 2023, RioGaleão has to pay R$1 billion to the federal government as fixed concession fees. In 2017, the company brought forward two and a half years of fixed concession payments to the federal government and rescheduled another two and a half years.
On Twitter, Rio´s governor, Cláudio Castro, said that with the decision of RioGaleão, the state and Brazil have the opportunity to make a re-bidding of Galeão in line with the Santos Dumont concession. He said that the workgroup that deals with the issue at the Ministry of Infrastructure will build the “best model” to ensure that Changi’s decision is an instrument for the recovery of Rio’s airport system.
The state government and the city hall had been opposing the concession model designed by the federal government for Santos Dumont, on the grounds that it emptied the Galeão.
Source: Valor International