More Media coverage in Brazil for CICTAR’s research on privatization of water and sanitation services

Carta Capital

Having already received significant media attention at the time of it’s launch the CICTAR report ‘Water down investment, top up returns’ has continued to receive attention in Brazil and beyond.

Brazil’s largest left-wing magazine, Carta Capital has run an article covering the work, written by Livi Gerbase from CICTAR, Eaun Gibb from Public Services International, PSI and Fernando Biron from Sindae-BA and the research was featured in the most recent regional podcast from the Tax Justice Network, a leading global voice for tax justice

The report, developed with Sindae-BA, a sanitation union in Bahia, examines the case of BRK Ambiental, a private sanitation company controlled by the Canadian asset manager Brookfield.

It shows how Brazilian people are subsidising the privatisation of water resources that were publicly owned before Bolsonaro’s sanitation law came into affect, opening the sector to private, and foreign, ownership.

CICTAR found that large companies are using loans that benefit from federal tax incentives — theoretically intended for infrastructure investments — to finance their purchase of Brazilian public assets. in the case of BRK the company was accumulating billions in debt, with but only a fraction of that was being allocated to investments, making a mockery of the rationale for providing tax breaks.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Brazil are paying increasingly expensive rates, and the improvements promised by privatization have yet to be fulfilled. In other words, the people are paying a second time for water that, until a few years ago, was theirs.