São Paulo – The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES, in the Portuguese acronym) posted in 2014 its third largest net profit, with gains of R$ 8.594 billion (US$ 2.636 billion). According to the balance sheet released this Monday (30th) by the institution, last year’s profit was 5.4% higher than the one posted in 2013.
In a statement, BNDES said that the performance with the sector of funding to investment projects generated positive results to the institution. Only with this type of operation, revenues reached R$ 13.4 billion (US$ 4.1 billion). Meanwhile, gains with equity investments in companies stood at R$ 2.9 billion (US$ 889.5 million). It also contributed for BNDES’s performance the low default rate, of only 0.01%, the lowest in the history of the bank.
However, in 2014 BNDES recorded losses with its investments in Petrobras. The state-owned oil company is under corruption investigations and still hasn’t posted the audited results of Q3 and Q4. Because of the reports of corruption and the delay on the release of the balance sheets, the company’s stocks went down.
“Due to the extended and significant decline in the market price of these stocks, a qualitative analysis of the investment was made, to quantify the existence of a possible non-recoverable amount of the assets”, says BNDES’s statement. The bank estimates the losses at R$ 2.6 billion (US$ 797.5 million). From this amount, R$ 1 billion (US$ 306.7 million) was already accounted for in last year’s balance sheet.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
