Bolivia Nationalizes Its Three Main Airports

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Tuesday, February 19, 2013 by Common Dreams

Bolivia Nationalizes Its Three Main Airports

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

Bolivia's President Evo Morales announced the nationalization of the country's three main airports on Monday, saying the Spanish company that operated them had sought to "maximize profits" at Bolivia's expense and had failed to make necessary investments.

The airports, in La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, were operated by Sabsa (Servicios de Aeropuertos Bolivianos), and, according to BBC News, "had been jointly managed by the Barcelona-based company Abertis and Spain's airport authority."

Reuters reports:

"I want to let the people of Bolivia know about the nationalization of Sabsa," Morales said in a televised speech in the central city of Cochabamba, adding that the company had made "an exorbitant profit with a derisory capital input."

"For this and other reasons, we were obliged to make this decision. We were ready to do this years ago, but we waited because of our diplomatic relations with certain countries," he said.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/19-4

[wayne_fontes]

1. They yanked the concession

to manage the airport. Bolivia never gave up ownership of the airports. Bolivia did freeze the fees that could be collected at the airports ten years ago. It might be tough to invest in capital improvements when your revenue stream hasn't been allowed to keep up with inflation for ten years. In any event the Spanish company claims it did invest 36 mil.

Without knowing what the net revenues were, how much was really invested in capital improvements and what constitutes "excessive profits" it's impossible to form an opinion on whether this was a good move.

[naaman fletcher]

2. It was a good move.

There will be a way to find out:

See if Morales immediately raises the fees.

Kirchner took YPF for not investing enough. YPF said "but you won't let us charge enough for our production".

So what did Kirchner just do? She raised the price of the gas now that she took it over and realized YPF was right.

(Actually that is the charitable view. The less charitable view is that it was just a plan to steal it all along).