The PS/Açores today considered the announcement by the Regional Government (PSD/CDS-PP/PPM) to cancel the current tender and launch a new one for the privatization of Azores Airlines, part of the SATA group, to be “good news” for the region.
“The Regional Government’s announcement that it will cancel the privatization process and launch a new procedure [for the privatization of Azores Airlines] turns out to be good news for the Azores and the Azoreans, because it is also the Government’s recognition [that] it has failed in the process it has designed and implemented so far,” said Carlos Silva, a member of the Azorean PS secretariat.
According to the socialist’s statements released by the party, at the beginning of the process, the coalition executive “spoke of a process with more than 30 interested parties and it culminated in zero, because it was canceled”.
“And it was a procedure that didn’t defend the regional interest, didn’t safeguard jobs, didn’t safeguard keeping the headquarters in the Azores. And all of this has been said several times over the last year by the PS, by other parties, by the social partners, and the [Regional] Government has always ignored it,” he continued.
The socialist also recalled that the Azorean government “also withheld information from parliament about the privatization process”, information that “has remained unknown to this day”.
The government of the Azores announced today the cancellation of the privatization tender for Azores Airlines and the launch of a new one, claiming that the company was valued at six million euros at the start of the process and is now worth 20 million, but denied that reservations about the competing consortium had played a role in the decision.
At the beginning of April, the jury of the public tender for the privatization of Azores Airlines delivered its final report and upheld the decision to accept only one bidder, but admitted reservations about the ability of the Newtour/MS Aviation consortium to ensure the viability of the company.
The Board of Directors of the SATA group, led by Teresa Gonçalves, who has since resigned, also expressed “reservations about the NewTour MS Aviation consortium and the limitations of the bidder” in the opinion sent to the Regional Government.
The PS/Açores hopes that “this time the Regional Government will be able to be more transparent, more competent and more professional, in a privatization process that is necessary, which was negotiated with Brussels”.
“But what was negotiated with Brussels was the sale of a maximum of 51%. So it makes no sense for the [Azorean] government to make the same mistake and go beyond what was negotiated with Brussels. It’s important that the Azores maintain a relevant position in the share capital of Azores Ailines, because that’s the only way to defend the regional interest”, defends Carlos Silva.
Finally, the Socialist stressed that the coalition government’s announcement of the suspension of the privatization process for Azores Airlines, made during the regional election campaign, “was nothing more than a farce, because everyone expected what ended up happening today, which was the cancellation of that process and the launch of a new one”.
For the PS, in this process, the Regional Government “has been deceiving and misleading the Azoreans”, which it considers “regrettable”.
