With a discount of approximately R$ 10 billion, two Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) for sanitary sewage for 24 municipalities in Ceará were auctioned on B3, the São Paulo stock exchange. The auction of the areas served by the Ceará Water and Sewage Company (Cagece) was supported by the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES).
The two available lots were disputed out loud and were won by the bidder Aegea Saneamento. Block 1 was auctioned for R$7.652 billion, which represents a discount of 27.92%. The reference value was BRL 10,615,857,130.09. The selection criterion considered the offer with the lowest sum of considerations over the 30 years foreseen for the concession.
Block 2 was sold for BRL 11.376 billion, a discount of 37.86%. The bidder Iguá Saneamento did not bid out loud, leaving the dispute with a single bid of BRL 11,426,422,112.72. The reference value of this lot was approximately R$ 18.3 billion.
Investments of R$ 6.2 billion are estimated, of which R$ 2.8 billion in the first five years. The supply of treated water will remain under Cagece’s responsibility.
“It is about vigorously advancing in something that is essential for people’s health, for the dignity of life, for well-being and also for our planet, for our nature. I see that the final objectives that unite us are these”, declared the governor of Ceará, Izolda Cela, during the hammering ceremony.
Roof
The municipalities served are in the metropolitan regions of Fortaleza and Cariri, with a population of around 4.3 million people. Sanitary sewage coverage reaches about 60% of residents in these areas. The goal is to reach 95% of the population of each municipality with the concession.
Legal Framework
The Minister of Regional Development, Daniel Ferreira, highlighted the changes made possible by the Legal Framework for Sanitation, which opened the sector to the private sector. “[O segmento] It depended eminently on transfers of public money, from states, municipalities and, to a large extent, transfers from the general budget of the Union, because sanitation works are major engineering interventions”, he recalled.
Neuri Freitas, president of Cagece, considered the auction a success and recalled that the concession was scheduled for 2020, but was delayed by the covid-19 pandemic. “We will finally reach the universalization of sanitary sewage services in the municipalities operated by the company”, she pointed out.
