Information regarding the business sector
ExpressJet Airlines, which operates in the United States as United Express on behalf of United Airlines Holdings, will add 36 Embraer ERJ145 aircraft to its fleet in the next 12 months. The company said it will eliminate a small number of E175 aircraft to have a fleet composed only of the ERJ145 as it plans to become the largest operator of the Brazilian 50-seat model in the world.
Carrefour Brasil SA expects to keep capital expenditure to convert 30 stores acquired from smaller rival Makro into its Atacadão wholesale format below R$300 million ($68.41 million). After local antitrust regulator Cade approves the recent acquisition, it should take three to six months to reopen each store as Atacadão, Roberto Müssnich, who leads Carrefour Brazil’s wholesale unit said.
Brazil presented on Sunday to the financial G20 meeting in Riyadh its ‘Programa Verde Amarelo’ (Yellow Green Program) with which the Jair Bolsonaro government seeks to generate 1.8 million jobs in three years for young people aged 18 to 24. This represents a 2% increase in the employed population and a projected reduction of more than 30% in labour costs for companies, said the Secretary of International Economic Affairs, Erivaldo Gomes, replacing the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, who did not attend the meeting in Saudi Arabia.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Twitter on Friday that he will be discussing the potential opening of a Tesla plant in Brazil during his trip to the United States in March, among other issues. On Thursday, Eduardo Bolsonaro, President’s son and lawmaker said he participated in a video conference with the Minister of Science and Technology, Marcos Pontes, and the minister-adviser of the US embassy, William Popp, to discuss the attraction of Tesla’s investment.
Brazilian state-owned lender Caixa Economica Federal is partnering with the world’s largest payments network Visa Inc to issue debit and credit cards, it said on Friday. The partnership comes as Caixa revamps its card business prior to selling a stake the newly created company, Caixa Cartoes. Caixa had 109.3 million debit and credit cards issued to clients in December, up 6.2% from a year earlier. Payments with Caixa cards totaled 210.8 billion reais ($47.97 billion) last year.
Amaggi, the Brazilian soybean group owned by entrepreneur-turned-politician Blairo Maggi, is in advanced talks to buy the local unit of Argentina’s El Tejar (O Telhar) to capitalise on increasing crop demand from China. The proposed acquisition, yet to be confirmed by both companies, would encompass all assets in Brazil, including about 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) of farming land, cotton mills, warehouses and machinery.
The majority of councillors at Brazil’s antitrust agency Cade voted on Wednesday against a prosecutors’ request to review the sale of Embraer SA’s EMBR3.SA commercial division to Boeing Co BA.N and allowed the deal to proceed. Earlier this month, Brazilian prosecutors had filed an appeal with Cade asking the regulator to reconsider its approval of the deal due to potential omissions in the decision. It tie-up had been approved without restrictions on Jan. 27.
Petrobras posted a net profit of R$40.137 billion ($9.2bn) in 2019, a 55.7% increase over the amount recorded in 2018. The figure also represents the highest nominal profit in the history of capital companies according to Economatica. In Q4 alone the net profit was R$8.153 billion – an increase of 287.87% over the same period the previous year.
Oil companies produced 3.17 million barrels per day (BPD) on average in Brazil in January, a volume 20.4% larger than seen in the same month a year earlier and an output record for the country, oil regulator ANP said. Natural gas production increased 22% over January 2019 to 138.7 million cubic meters per day on average last month, also a record.
Brazil will have around 20 million 5G users by 2023, accounting for 6% of the mobile base, according to Cisco’s Annual Internet Report 2018-2023. In the same period, the 4G customer base will grow to 58.4% from 53.8% of mobile accesses. By contrast, 3G and older technology will drop to 29.6% from 46.1% while IoT accesses will grow to 6% from 0.1 percent.
