The privatisation process of Portuguese carrier Azores Airlines is set to begin in January, according to information published yesterday by The Herald News.
The divestment of the State’s 51% stake in Azores Airlines is foreseen in the company’s restructuring plan, approved last June by the European Commission. That month, the institution approved state aid from Portugal totalling 453 million euros in loans and guarantees to support the corporate restructuring of SATA, the company’s owner.
This process would be completed in early December. In that case, the public tender to advance the Azores Airlines privatisation plan would start early next year, as announced earlier this week by the government of the Autonomous Region of the Azores.
The privatisation is foreseen in the annual budget. «I can announce that as of 1 January 2023 we will begin the public tender process to sale Azores Airlines», said Duarte Freitas, Regional Secretary for Finance, Planning and Public Administration.
The official stressed that the budget does not contemplate any more injections of funds into the company. He also assured that a holding company will be created in early December to separate Azores Airlines, SATA’s long-haul subsidiary, from SATA Air Açores, in order to move forward with the privatisation process.
Financial difficulties and losses
Although SATA started as a private airline, it was taken over by the Azores administration in 1980. Initially, ownership was shared between the regional government and TAP Air Portugal, the country’s largest airline.
In recent years, the company began to face financial difficulties and losses, a situation that was aggravated by the impact of the pandemic on the airline business. In this regard, Freitas remarked that the sums of money earmarked for SATA, and included in the 2021 and 2022 budgets, were intended to «save» the company from «the disaster it was led to in the past».
However, he made it clear that the expenditure cannot be repeated. As a result, the government proposal consists of a regional legislative decree authorising the sale of the majority stake in Azores Airlines. The process will continue to move forward over the coming months.
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