Infraero to bid to manage Angola's New Luanda Airport as it spreads its wings internationally

For several years now the Brazilian state airport operator Infraero has been in limbo, lost in its own personal Amazon jungle, downsized after the airport concession scheme began by governments that were then unsure just what to do with it. Suggestions ranged from: closing it down entirely to floating it on the stock exchange; to putting it in charge of nurturing small regional airports (as it has done for some time); to actually managing small airports, which it is doing now.

One suggestion that came along quite early on was that it should offer its management expertise externally, perhaps to invest in foreign airports.

Nothing was heard again of that proposal, but now it has an 'unlikely' champion in the form of Brazil's most recent president, who has been talking to the president of Angola about Infraero bidding to manage the new airport that is being built in Luanda. ('Unlikely' in the sense that he is no protagonist in favour of privatisation in his own country).

This scenario complicates Angola's search for an investor to take a 51% share in all of Angola's airports, which was announced earlier in 2023. There will be other interested parties for sure, China figuring highly, but such an outcome could be mutually beneficial to both Angola and Brazil.