Study argues that companies were instrumentalized between 1956 and 1998
Brazilian state-owned companies were instrumentalized by successive governments between 1956 and 1998 to serve the interests of international capital. One of the consequences of this process, which prioritized, among other issues, the payment of interest on external debt to the detriment of industrialization, was the advancement of underdevelopment in the country. The analysis is carried out by economist Carlos Henrique Lopes Rodrigues in his doctoral thesis entitled “Imperialism and State Enterprise in Brazilian Dependent Capitalism (1956-1998)”, defended at the Institute of Economics (IE) at Unicamp. The study advisor was professor Fábio Antonio de Campos.
In his work, Rodrigues also defends the hypothesis that the strategy of using state-owned companies to favor international capital, by granting advantages to multinationals located in the country, experienced a strong boost from the 1980s onwards, when the country began to implement neoliberalism. “Although several authors consider that the neoliberal adjustment was incorporated by the country in the 1990s, there is evidence that this began to occur much earlier”, states the researcher.
One of these pieces of evidence, according to the economist, was the creation, at the end of 1979, during the government of João Baptista Figueiredo, of the State Companies Control Secretariat (SEST), an entity linked to the Ministry of Planning, then under the command of Delfim Netto . “SEST promoted adjustments that anticipated the measures required by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the period from 1983 to 1985. Such initiatives signaled the adoption of neoliberal actions. The recognition of the arrival of neoliberalism in the country from the 1990s is the culmination of a process that had already been outlined previously”, assures Rodrigues.
According to the author of the thesis, the strategy of instrumentalizing state-owned companies completed three stages. Initially, he says, they were strengthened precisely to meet the interests of private accumulation of multinational companies in the national space, notably North American ones. “The Brazilian government began to invest in sectors that required large resources and an extensive maturation period. At that time, international private capital had no interest in making these investments itself and waiting for a long-term return. The government also began providing goods and services to multinationals on a subsidized basis,” he explains.
The strengthening of state-owned companies, observes Rodrigues, in agreement with sociologist Florestan Fernandes, did not mean that the country was moving towards autonomous capitalism. “In practice, this movement increased Brazil’s external dependence. State-owned companies were used to help multinational companies set up shop here. These, obviously, served the interests of the headquarters”, maintains the researcher.
The second stage of the process consisted of weakening state-owned companies, with a view to their future privatizations. “The government used several tricks to convince public opinion that state-owned companies were responsible for the imbalance in the Brazilian economy. According to this argument, they would be causing inflation, an imbalance in the balance of payments and compromising the creation of jobs”, reports Rodrigues. One of the maneuvers carried out with this purpose, highlights the economist, was to bring together universities, hospitals and other institutions that did not have the objective of generating revenue for public sector accounts, as a way of justifying that the deficit in these accounts was heavily pressured by state-owned companies.
The third and final phase of the process consisted of the formulation of decrees, provisional measures and laws that favored privatizations, starting in the 1990s, “which also benefited multinationals”, according to the author of the thesis. “At that moment, state-owned companies were reinvigorated, but with the sole purpose of becoming more interesting assets for their future controllers. These, along with those that were already profitable, were passed on to national and international private capital, mainly, with some being sold for values much lower than their real market price”, he attests.
Rodrigues also highlights some scandals that involved these privatizations, such as the so-called “BNDES Wiretap”, which occurred during the first government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Furthermore, Rodrigues highlights the speculative nature given to the large participation of financial capital in the auctions and the significant concentration of capital in the country from the acquisitions of state-owned companies, also accentuating the denationalization of the economy.
Among the profitable companies that were handed over to private control, Rodrigues lists, were Vale and Telebrás. “The three phases mentioned were part of a single process, whose purpose was to serve imperialist interests, which in turn reaffirmed the dependent character of the Brazilian economy”, reinforces the author of the thesis, who is currently a professor of the Economic Sciences Course at the University Federal Government of the Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys (UFVJM).
