Brazil’s seventh round of airport concessions begins

CAPA has been reporting on the Brazilian airport concession process since it began in 2011. Finally the end is in sight, with the seventh tranche and possibly an eighth tranche to follow.

Numerous international 'big hitters' in the airport privatisation field snapped up concessions in the earlier tranches when big city airports were made available. Most of the deals worked out well, both for the government and the companies, but not all of them.

More recently the latter tranches have been mainly of smaller regional airports, dressed up with a bigger one in a process that was locally described as 'steak with bone,' and one that attracted only domestic investors.

But in this one, although the smaller airports are still part of the process, two larger ones that were previously omitted - because without them the state operator Infraero had no profitable ones - have been included, which may be a final wake-up call to the international investors.