Brazil Congress May Let Workers Use FGTS Funds to Buy Petrobras

[Blue_Tires]

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s Congress will consider allowing workers to tap a fund known as FGTS to buy new Petroleo Brasileiro SA shares to finance exploration of deepwater offshore oil fields, lower-house Deputy Joao Maia said.

The proposal to let workers use as much as 100 percent of their individual FGTS accounts was introduced in Brazil’s lower house as an amendment to oil regulations sent to Congress last month by Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, according to the Congress Web site. Under Lula’s proposal, Petrobras would issue new shares and buy rights to as much as 5 billion barrels of oil in the so-called pre-salt fields from the government.

“This discussion is legitimate and for a good cause,” Maia, who will draft the amended bills to be voted on the lower house’s floor, said by telephone from Natal, Brazil. “The bill will be ready for a vote by Nov. 10.”

Brazilian law requires employers to deposit 8 percent of an employee’s monthly salary into separate FGTS accounts that can be withdrawn by the worker to buy a house, for retirement or if the employee is fired. The fund had 212 billion reais ($117 billion) at the start of the month, according to Caixa Economica Federal, the federally controlled bank that operates the fund.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aQBIm8ytaXdw