The Secretary of Planning, Lottery and Energy of the Ministry of Economy, Alexandre Manoel, had told Reuters that the new announcement will be released later this month, with the event scheduled for October.
At that moment, he said that the minimum grant would be about 600 million reais. The winner of the dispute may split the purchase eight times. The previous version of the announcement foresaw payment four times. The minimum annual revenue required by the groups to participate in the competition was reduced from 1.2 billion to about 600 million reais.
"We have structured this auction so to have participants and competition, and we are interested in the best coming because the government will also win," he said. According to the secretary, the new announcement foresees that the government will be entitled to receive 16.7% of the revenues of the operator Lotex, not including income tax and other taxes.
The perspective is that the concession strongly raises the points of sale. Today, there are 13,000 points of sale and the projection is that in the coming years this network will reach 65,000 points. "The lottery market in Brazil is far from the world average and we expect an expansion of the market, with more revenues and many jobs," he concluded.
At a news conference on Wednesday this week, the government announced a plan to privatize nine state-owned companies. In total, as stated by Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, 17 assets are included in the Partnership and Investment Program (PPI). In addition to those nine, there are eight other state-owned companies that were previously in the program, including Lotex.
To reach 17, the government cited Lotex, which has already gone through two failed bid attempts, the sale of Bank of Brazil shares held by the Union and six state-owned companies already in the PPI Program. Lotex, however, cannot even be characterized as state-owned, as it is a Caixa Loterias activity, not a subsidiary.
The conference was attended by the Chief Minister of the Civil House, Onyx Lorenzoni; the Minister of Infrastructure, Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas; the Privatization Secretary, Salim Mattar; and the Special Secretary of the Investment Partnership Program (PPI), Martha Seillier. Onyx said the current PPI portfolio is estimated at R$ 1.3 trillion, and the government estimate is to rise to R$ 2 trillion with Wednesday's announcement.
Source: GMB
