“I believe the proposal points to a period of three to five years,” he said, when asked about Efacec’s recovery time, in a joint interview with Antena 1 and Jornal de Negócios, broadcast in full on radio on Sunday in the program “Capital Conversation”.
According to Pedro Cilínio, if the German fund “sells Efacec before that deadline, it’s because the recovery went better”.
As for the value of the sale or the capital to be invested by the Mutares fund, the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs declined to disclose, claiming that it will happen “at the right time” as “aspects are being closed for the signing of the contract”.
Faced with criticism from the PSD, which accuses the government of being opaque in Efacec’s privatization file, Pedro Cilínio replied that the Minister of the Economy, António Costa Silva, “is leading the process and will certainly, when he deems it appropriate, distribute the needed information”.
The PSD announced this week that it will ask for an emergency parliamentary debate on Efacec’s privatization scheduled for next Wednesday, given that the government has acted opaquely and that the economy minister has left several questions unanswered.
Speaking to Lusa on Thursday, Social Democratic deputy Paulo Rios de Oliveira said the minister’s statements have left “questions, concerns and bewilderment”.
“First, they didn’t announce the sale, they announced the sale project. How much are you going to pay? We don’t know. What is the project? We don’t know. What is the need to involve more creditors in the project accepted? We don’t know. What is the creative model by which the state can restore what it put there? We don’t know. To what extent? We don’t know,” said Paulo Rios de Oliveira.
On Wednesday, Economy and Marine Minister António Costa Silva said at a press conference in Lisbon that the proposal for the Mutares fund has been “closely analysed”, to ensure that it gives comfort to the executive regarding the future and the maintenance of the Efacec as “a great industrial and technological project”.
On April 11, Parpública announced that it had received enhanced binding proposals from four candidates to purchase 71.73% of Efacec, as part of the company’s re-privatization process.
The enhanced binding proposals were submitted by Mutares, Oaktree, Oxy Capital and Visabeira-Sodecia Grouping.
In November, the government approved a new process for the reprivatization of the state’s 71.73% stake, with a new mandate, after announcing on October 28 that the sale of Efacec to the DST group had not been finalized because it had not verified “all the necessary conditions” for the performance of the sales contract.
Source: DN
