The State has injected 3.7 billion euros during the year 2021 in Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP), in EPE (Public Business Entity) hospitals, integrated in the SNS, and in TAP, to mitigate the financial and asset deterioration prevent companies. In total, this effort represented 70% of the state’s total expenditure on public enterprises – which includes loans and compensatory allowances in addition to capital inflows – which amounted to 5.27 billion euros in 2021, an increase of 1 . 17 billion euros, according to the report released yesterday by the Public Finance Council (CFP) on State Businesses 2020-2021, which analyzed 87 non-financial entities and seven financial entities.
Infraestruturas de Portugal, which manages 15,056 kilometers of the national road network, was the state entity to receive the largest public check in 2021, at 1.61 billion euros, yet a reduction of 559 million from the 2020 injection, 1.05 billion . This is followed by the sector consisting of EPE hospitals, which had a financial endowment of 1.08 billion euros, a value that almost doubled compared to 2020, when the capital inflow was set at 563 million euros. Closing the stage is TAP, with a capital injection of 998 million euros, while in 2020 it had no amounts on this item, but only the government loan of 1.2 billion euros.
If we also add the injection of 254 million euros into the Metropolitano de Lisboa and 53 million into the Empresa de Desenvolvimento e Infra-estruturas do Alqueva, the capital inflow of the state into public companies in 2021 reached 3.99 billion euros, an increase of 1 .96 billion euros compared to the 2.03 billion injected in 2020, the institution led by Nazaré da Costa Cabral signals.
The Public Finance Council takes a cautious look at these cash injections, stating that “the systematic need for capital inflows by the state is a relevant indicator of the operational and economic situation of these companies and a signal of the financial effort they represent to public finances”. That is, this independent body warns of the risks associated with the financial health and autonomy of these companies and the high bill that these same entities will have in public accounts.
Of the 87 non-financial entities analyzed, the Public Finance Council points out that “only 27 achieved positive net results in 2021, for a total of EUR 207 million”, while “the remaining 60 recorded losses of EUR 3.41 billion, two thirds of which relate on companies in the TAP universe that posted a negative result of EUR 2.08 billion.
The CFP even underlines that “32 had negative equity”, at the end of 2021. “Thus, these companies were in a situation that can be qualified as technical bankruptcy, with five of them holding more than 87% of the total negative equity of the value , focusing on the entities created after the nationalization of BPN (Parups, with -905 million euros, and Parvalorem, with 3.9 billion euros below the waterline) and Metro do Porto (-3.5 billion euros),” he reveals. But in this package of weak financial health we still find CP – Comboios de Portugal, with negative equity of EUR 1.9 billion, and TAP, with minus EUR 1.2 billion.
In terms of the public health sector, the negative effects of the pandemic continued to weigh on economic outcomes in 2021, with “virtually all SNS EPEs posting negative net results, for a negative total of EUR 1117.5 million, translating into an increase of EUR 342 million euros compared to 2020,” the CFP report states. According to the entity headed by Nazaré da Costa Cabral, “the persistence of negative economic results is associated with inadequate funding, organization and management”. The most visible consequences are the high level of debt (the debt ratio reached 110.8% in 2021), the persistent payment arrears (although they have decreased slightly, from EUR 147.5 million in 2020 to EUR 107.2 million in 2021) and the increase of average payment terms to suppliers (from 143 days in 2020 to 168 days in 2021),” he says.
Caixa made a profit of 583.4 million euros
On the other hand, the state’s financial companies posted a profit of 636 million euros in 2021, 47 million more than in 2020, highlighting the greater contribution of Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), which saw an increase in positive net income from 92 million euros to 583.4 million euros, according to the CFP.
Of the eight public sector financial companies, Parpública and Banco Português de Fomento (BPF) also stand out, whose net results increased by nine and 13 million euros respectively to a profit of 29 and 23 million euros in 2021. Of these companies, paid only CGD in 2021 paid dividends to the State of EUR 383.6 million, while no profit had been distributed to the public shareholder in the previous two years.
Source: DN
