São Paulo – The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES, in the Portuguese acronym) has announced this Tuesday (17th) that long-term loans have been approved to the airports of Guarulhos, in São Paulo, and Brasília, amounting to a combined R$ 4.27 billion (US$ 1.83 bn). Both terminals have been given in concession to the private initiative at an auction last year. Prior to that, they were operated by the state-owned company Infraero.
According to the bank, the loans will be spent on expanding, modernizing, and exploring the airports’ infrastructures, apart from paying bridge loans granted previously by the BNDES itself.
According to the BNDES, the São Paulo International Airport, in Guarulhos, the country’s largest, will see R$ 3.48 billion (US$ 1.49 bn), of which R$ 1.2 billion (US$ 514 mn) will go to paying a bridge loan made in October 2012. The airport’s concession is held by GRU Airport, comprised of Brazil’s Invepar, Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) – which operates the airports of Johannesburg, in South Africa, and Mumbai, in India –, and by Infraero itself.
The Brasília Airport’s concessionaire will receive R$ 797.1 million (US$ 341.9 mn), of which R$ 488 million (US$ 209.3 mn) will be spent on paying a bridge loan made in December last year. Inframérica comprises the Brazilian group Engevix and Argentina’s Corporación América, which operates terminals in Argentina, Armenia, Ecuador, Italy and Peru. Similar to the Guarulhos Airport, Infraero retains 49% stake, but the business is controlled by the private partners.
Bridge loans are amounts supplied by the BNDES to enable fast investment during the restructuring phases of long-term credit operations. It is an advance loan.
The portions of the loans destined for investment will cover 64% of the expenditure plan in Guarulhos and 61% of the expenditure plan in Brasília.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum