RIO DE JANEIRO, July 31 ― Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras announced yesterday it reduced its losses in the second quarter of the year, saying there were “signs of recovery” from the global economic meltdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The company posted a net loss of 2.7 billion reals (RM1.76 billion) for the period from April to June, far better than the 48.5 billion reals it lost in the first three months of 2020.
“The global economy is showing signals of recovery boosted by the US$15 trillion injection ― about 12 per cent of global GDP ― derived from monetary and fiscal policy actions,” chief executive Roberto Castello Branco said in a statement.
“Uncertainty remains,” he added, but “on a more moderated level.”
Petrobras was pummeled in the first quarter by coronavirus shutdown measures that slashed global oil demand.
The loss it posted then was its worst since it was hit by a huge corruption scandal in 2014-2017.
The company said last quarter that the oil industry was facing its “worst crisis in the last 100 years.”
Branco sought to sound a more upbeat note on the second quarter.
“We are running the ship safely through uncharted waters,” he said.
“We are working hard, fast and efficiently to engineer a J-shaped recovery, ending up better than we were in the pre-Covid era.”
The loss was less than it might have been thanks to the recovery of value-added tax formerly paid into the federal unemployment and social security benefit programmes.
That one-time gain amounted to 10.9 billion reals, the company said.
Petrobras only emerged in 2018 from four years of heavy losses brought on by revelations that top politicians and executives stole billions from the company in a massive corruption scheme.
Now, after posting a record profit of US$10.2 billion in 2019, the firm is facing the fallout of the pandemic.
The second-quarter loss was a reversal from the US$4.8 billion net profit the company booked in the same period last year.
Petrobras has been selling off assets and slashing spending to put its books in order since the 2014 corruption crisis exploded.
It says it wants to use the pandemic to further its cost-cutting, and is considering having much of its workforce telecommute long-term to save on office space. ― AFP
