Private sector financing for infrastructure is beginning in Brazil, with international companies searching for the yields on offer in the sector and local companies increasingly seeing viable sources of medium-to-long term financing from the capital markets.
At the World Economic Forum in São Paulo in mid-March, CEOs of large construction companies confirmed their interest in committing money to the country’s huge infrastructure needs – and predicted a large pool of institutional investors’ capital would also be available to finance such projects.
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Joe Kaeser, |
“Once the government has a vision, and a plan in place, then investment will come [to finance Brazil’s infrastructure needs],” Joe Kaeser, Siemens’ president and chief executive officer, told the attendees of the São Paulo WEF. “Insurance companies in particularly will be keen to invest in infrastructure because [those investments] correlate with inflation, which is what they want in their portfolios.”
Kaeser said he had had talks with Brazil’s president Michel Temer about the country’s need to develop an integrated plan to the country’s infrastructure needs, linking up governmental policies to finance, planning, energy and environment issues.
“There is abundant money because Brazil has got the natural resources,” he says, adding that the country could easily build up from being a primary supplier of commodities to the next stage of the value chain.
