BRASILIA: Joaquim Levy, the new finance minister, waved with changes in Petrobras’ pricing policy, Petrobras will make their pricing decisions as a company Levy said.
Levy said of course Petrobras is a dominant company and has to take there their proper care. I have no evidence to assess as it was before, but my sensitivity indicates that it will increasingly take weight as assessed business decisions.
In recent years, the government had been criticized for maintaining artificially low fuel prices in the domestic market to help control inflation. The policy would have undermined Petrobras safes.
Levy seems to go in the right direction. But the ideal, to align Petrobras to market practices it would be that its Board was not chaired by the Minister of Finance. Otherwise, it will be difficult to make the company longer be used as an instrument of economic policy.
Adriano Pires, president of the Brazilian Center for Infrastructure (CBIE) is still early to assess what influence Levy must have in the company. Guido Mantega, the previous minister of Finance, was chairman and had an influence said that was not good.
More recently, however, the low oil prices caused fuel prices practiced in Brazil started to be larger than the international market.