TAP privatisation to likely start in July, Portuguese government says

The process to privatise national flag carrier TAP will likely begin in July, as the government said it would aim to approve the statute to start the privatisation process then and later approve a resolution to define terms and specifications.

Finance Minister Fernando Medina announced the timetable during a cabinet meeting where it was decided that the Finance Ministry and Parpública, the main state investment holding company, would be mandated to carry out two independent assessments of the airline’s value.

With Infrastructure Minister João Galamba at his side, Medina stressed that this step “is mandatory and prior” to the approval by the government, via decree-law, of the range of matters relating to the criteria of the privatisation process.

In other words, questions about the percentage of TAP shares that are to be privatised or whether any minimum financial revenue to be received by the state as part of the privatisation process “can only be decided by the government after independent evaluations of the value of the airline are completed,” said Medina.

“In this framework, we will do everything in strict compliance with the steps determined by law, not anticipating what the law determines should not be anticipated,” he added.

“These questions will be answered in the decree-law and then in the cabinet resolution of the Council of Ministers that will follow shortly afterwards, where the general terms of the privatisation and the specifications of the privatisation will be fixed,” Medina also said.

(Pedro Morais Fonseca/Lusa.pt)