Portugal scraps plans to privatise TAP airline

The Portuguese government scrapped on Thursday plans to privatise the national airline TAP Portugal by selling it to a South American consortium, Synerty Aerospace, which owns the Colombian carrier Avianca.

“The cabinet decided today not to accept the offer that was presented in connection with the privatisation of TAP,” government spokesman Luis Marques Guedes said after Portuguese ministers met in Lisbon.

Synergy Aerospace was the sole candidate to buy TAP, which the government sought to sell as part of a 5.5 billion euro ($7.3 billion) privatisation programme that Portugal agreed to carry out last year in exchange for 78 billion euros in rescue loans from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

According to the government’s draft 2013 budget, Portugal had planned to sell TAP and the national airport authority ANA early next year.

In 2011, TAP posted an operating loss of 18.1 million euros, and employed 12,395 people including in a subsidiary regional airline.