Seeking in vain to contain the prices of fuels as the presidential election approaches, the Brazilian executive changes once again the boss of the public oil company.
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Barely time to settle in his office that he had to make his boxes. After forty days spent at the head of Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil company José Mauro Coelho was removed from his duties, the third dismissal in just over a year. The news was announced on Monday, May 23 at 10 p.m. on Monday, May 23 – after closing the stock markets – through a press release from the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME). In the process, the government has appointed the Caio Paes company at the head of Andrade, a relative of Paulo Guedes, the very liberal Minister of the Economy.
If the news has been able to surprise within the company, it has already been acted in government for a few days. President Jair Bolsonaro had even assured, in one of his weekly interventions on social networks, which he “wanted to change many people” within the company held 50.2 % by the Brazilian state. During another intervention, he had taken against the policy of alignment of the oil company prices with those of international courses, while the company was at the same time a quarterly profit of 44.5 billion reais (8.70 billion euros). “Your profit is a rape, it’s absurd,” he said.
Five months from the presidential election, it was therefore urgent for the government in place to try to pause the vertiginous increases in the price of fuel that strikes the country, the last having intervened at the beginning of May with an increase of 8.87 % of the price of diesel. Because Jair Bolsonaro, in search of a new mandate and second in the voting intentions behind the ex-president Lula (workers’ party), knows that he plays big. According to a recent survey carried out by the DataFolha Institute, most Brazilians (68 %) hold it in fact responsible for the rise in prices at the pump.
“electoral maneuver”
Qualified by several experts in the press as “amazing scandal” and “electoral maneuver”, the dismissal of José Mauro Coelho and his replacement by Caio Paes de Andrade appear above all as a contradiction. “The ultraliberalism advocated by the Minister of the Economy Paulo Guedes is poorly adapted to a policy of supervising fuel prices, notes Marco Antonio Rocha, economist and professor at the University of Campinas. If he Must reassure financial circles – one of the levers of the ascent of Bolsonaro in power -, it must also reassure, even seduce, other categories, essential to the re -election of the latter. This is the case of classes Popular rather “lulist” and largely impacted by the increase in the price of foodstuffs in clear increase because mainly transported by road. Without forgetting the truckers, always capable of paralyzing the country, and the agrobusiness companies, also very dependent energy prices. “
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