Brazilian government considers sale of semiconductor firm
The Brazilian government has added the National Center for Advanced Electronic Technology (CEITEC) to a list of assets that could be privatized.
CEITEC is a government organization linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications. It was created in 2008 as one of the government initiatives intended to increase Brazil's competitiveness in technology.
The center located in Porto Alegre, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, is focused on developing and producing integrated circuits for RFID and other specific applications. It produces over 70 million chips per year.
Sensors produced by CEITEC are used in large scale in areas such as cattle control chips and product tracking. Other areas of application include traffic management, passports and ID cards.
According to the decree that added the company to the list of government assets that could be suitable for sale, studies and evaluation of private partnership alternatives will be carried out to define efficiency and financial gains to be had.
A committee will have a period of 360 days to analyze the private partnership options.
In August 2019, the Brazilian government announced it is looking to sell the Federal Data Processing Service (Serpro) and the Social Security Technology and Information Company (Dataprev) as part of wider plans to privatize a number of its assets.