State to inject more €1.5 billion in TAP

  • ECO News
  • 12 October 2021

The State Budget contemplates an additional €536 million for the airline this year and €990 million next year.

The Portuguese airline will receive a further €1.52 billion from taxpayers. This year, TAP will get an additional €536 million, which will be added to the €462 million capital increase carried out in May. Next year it will receive another €990 million. In three years, António Costa’s government will inject a total of €3.19 billion.

The amount that will be injected into TAP this year is double the 500 million in state guarantees for market funding that were included in the budget for this year, although at the time the government said that the sum was uncertain. It depended on the pandemic’s evolution, demand for air transport and TAP’s restructuring plan.

The $536 million that will be paied by the end of the year follows a capital increase of $462 million into the company in May as part of compensation for the pandemic. After this operation, the State now, directly and indirectly, owns close to 98% of the aviation business. The remaining 2% is divided between Humberto Pedrosa (1.8%) and the workers (0.4%).

To those figures must be added a €1.2 billion financing granted in 2020, a repayment that was extended until the end of the year. With no new injections, TAP will receive a total of 3.188 million, in line with the restructuring plan submitted to Brussels, which is still awaiting approval by the European Commission.