Privatization of ‘Correios’ Attracts Interest from American UPS

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The privatization process of ‘Correios’ (Brazilian Postal Service) may be confusing, but that does not prevent the first interested parties from starting to speak out.

This is the case of the giant UPS, a US multinational delivery company, which is said to have shown interest in buying the state-owned company in a meeting with Economy Minister Paulo Guedes in Davos, where the World Economic Forum is being held.

Guedes met with Nando Cesarone, president of UPS International, during the event. No one is openly talking about the topic discussed, but sources consulted by Valor Econômico news maazine say that the subject was, in fact, the interest in buying the ‘Correios’.

According to Estadão newspaper, one of UPS’s interests in the company would be to develop the export capacity for small and medium-sized companies. The company is not alone among the names with a potential interest in buying the ‘Correios’. Among them are giants like Fedex and Amazon, the Chinese company Alibaba, and the airlines Latam and Azul.

The government expects the sale of ‘Correios’ to happen, totally or partially, by 2021 at the latest, with BNDES (National Bank of Economic and Social Development) still studying the feasibility and modeling of this privatization.

However, there are a number of controversies regarding the sale of the state-owned company. The army general Juarez Aparecido Cunha, who was in charge of the ‘Correios’ until June, said that the people would pay the bill for the privatization while the companies would take the profitable part of the activity. Shortly after, he was removed from office accused of “acting as a unionist”.

In addition, when the privatization plan was announced, the ‘Correios’ also published an article explaining how a complete privatization could be harmful, mentioning frustrated cases like those in Portugal and Argentina, while mentioning as a positive example the German DHL, which is partially publicly owned, with the State remaining as the controling shareholder.