Eike's crates and the jobs in Algeciras
With billions of dollars in loans from BNDES, and more government aid on the way for his businesses, Brazil has been generous to businessman Eike Batista.
With billions of dollars borrowed from BNDES, and more government aid on the way for his businesses, Brazil has been generous to businessman Eike Batista. Given this, and with his businesses performing poorly and increasingly dependent on public funds, the least he could do is always prioritize national companies as partners and create jobs in Brazil.
It is therefore strange that for the works at the Port of Açu, in Rio de Janeiro, Eike Batista's LLX chose a Spanish company, FCC – Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas, to build a gigantic pier with a prefabricated structure.
Even considering that this company may have more expertise in port construction – and that some intend to provide generous assistance to Spain – it would be necessary, in this case, to obtain a minimum of compensation.
The terms of the contract, worth $448 million, should include the requirement for a consortium with a Brazilian company to carry out the work. When the contract involves public funds, this is a common requirement in many countries around the world.
In the US, for example, EMBRAER, in order to supply 20 aircraft to the United States government, was forced to form a minority partnership with a local company, build and open a new factory in Florida.
In Açu, this Spanish company was hired directly, without any requirement for a local agreement, and, even more seriously, without even being required to build the prefabricated parts used for the project in Brazil.
As a result, 700 jobs were lost in our country and transferred to Algeciras, Spain. There, 10 gigantic concrete boxes, each 45 meters long, 24 meters wide, and 18 meters high, weighing 10.000 tons (see photo), were assembled and poured. Five of them are currently crossing the ocean on a journey of almost 8.000 kilometers towards Brazil.
Could it be that in Brazil, the land of Itaipu, Oscar Niemeyer, and the BNDES (the bank that lends money to Mr. Eike Batista), there was no one capable of producing these reinforced concrete boxes right here? If these cubes had been prefabricated in Brazil, they would have been much cheaper.
We must also consider the costs of hoisting them onto the deck of a semi-submersible vessel and transporting them across the ocean.
PEMEX, the Mexican oil company, interested in the technology of a certain Iberian shipyard, had no doubt. Last week, they went there and bought a controlling stake in the business.
In Brazil, we use billions of dollars of public funds to finance Spanish multinationals, as happened with Vivo.
Either we forgive their debts amounting to billions of reais, as CARF forgave Santander's debt, so that they can continue exploiting our people and keep sending billions and billions of euros in profit remittances to Spain every year.