Airport News
Airlines may not hold more than a 1 percent stake in groups bidding for airport concessions in Sao Paulo and Brasilia in order to avoid a conflict of interest, the head of the Brazil's civil aviation authority, Wagner Bittencourt said.
A company or investment group can only take one of the three major airport concessions expected at auction by May, as the government loosens a state airport monopoly in its rush to prepare for the 2014 soccer World Cup.
"The idea is to have different operators in those three airports, so we can have a basis for comparison to better regulate the system," Cleverson Aroeira da Silva, another official with the civil aviation authority said in Rio de Janeiro.
The details of the bidding process come as Brazil is, for the first time, letting private companies build and operate five major passenger terminals, marking an ideological shift as the government ramps up for the World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
The first concession granted under the new framework was a small terminal in Rio Grande do Norte, won by Inframerica, a venture formed by Brazil's Engevix and Argentina's Corporacion America, for BRR170 million reais (USD$90 million) and a minimum investment of BRR650 million reais.
Only two of 13 airport terminals under expansion are on schedule to be finished when the World Cup begins in June 2014, a government-backed research group reported earlier this year.
Brazil's airports, until now run exclusively by state-owned airport authority Infraero, are also dragging on the country's economic potential — one of several factors dimming the outlook for growth after record 7.5 percent expansion in 2010.
