Guarantees ‘if offers aren’t relevant, government may suspend deal altogether ‘

In what may be the ‘non-announcement of the day’, prime minister Luís Montenegro has announced the reprivatisation of 49.9% of the country’s flag carrier TAP, “guaranteeing” that if none of the offers on the table are “relevant, there is the possibility that we will suspend the reprivatisation”.

In other words, everything national media has been saying for months, if not years, is as it has always been: the government wants to ‘sell’ TAP, but as it won’t get the backing of left-wing parties in parliament, it is trying to chart a middle path, of selling a minority stake for as much money as possible.

TAP needs a lot of money: the state (ergo taxpayers) has already ploughed upwards of €3.2 billion into it, and it certainly is not worth that much money. The top whack would seem to be around the billion euro mark – and that would be for the ‘whole package’, not 49.9%.

So today’s announcement, made during the Council of Ministers, is perhaps more to show that the prime minister is ‘alive and well’ – bearing in mind that he was called on to answer three burning questions by the leader of the Socialist party last weekend, and still hasn’t done so.

He has however gone over the old ground on TAP.

“It is my duty to share with you that we have already had the opportunity to decide and approve a decree law in which we completed the reprivatisation of 49.9% of TAP’s share capital. Today we kicked off the first phase of TAP’s privatisation. 44.9% of TAP goes to a private investor and 5% to the workers,” he said, adding that he wants to safeguard the hub in Lisbon and the “use of the country’s airport infrastructures”.

Correio da Manhã continues: “Montenegro also guaranteed that “if no proposal for TAP is relevant, there is a possibility that we will suspend the reprivatisation” – but he is convinced that “there will be many interested parties” and he will have the opportunity to “evaluate the proposals that are presented from a financial, technical and strategic point of view”.

“We are complying with what is written in the electoral programme, in the government’s programme, in the first phase of the reprivatisation of TAP’s share capital, taking care to give sustainability to our airline, linking sustainability with the use of our airport infrastructures, exploiting their potential, the economic development of the country,” explained the PM.

“We have already spent a lot of money that hasn’t had an impact on the lives of the Portuguese. We want the company to be profitable, well managed, within a context of being competitive and financially sustainable,” he concluded.

The country has been told, ad infinitum, that various international aviation groups have shown interest in buying TAP (whether or not this extends to 49.9% we have not been told). These companies have been identified as  Air France-KLM, IAG – the parent company of Iberia, British Airways and Vueling, and Germany’s Lufthansa. There is also a ‘Portuguese lobby’ keen to ensure the airline does not fall into foreign hands. ND