BRASILIA, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's major state-owned companies saw growth of 19.6 percent in the first half of 2017, reaching revenues of 17.3 billion reais (5.53 billion U.S. dollars), the Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management announced on Wednesday.
These numbers refer to the joint performance of Petrobras, Eletrobras, Caixa Economica Federal, the Bank of Brazil and the national development bank, BNDES.
In a statement, the secretary of coordination and management of state-owned companies, Fernando Antonio Soares, said this positive result came about due to government actions.
"Each company has its own identity, but the logic of restructuring them, to reduce costs and increase revenue, to search for business which brings about more results, that has been a practice," said Soares.
He pointed to a number of government measures, including voluntary dismissal programs, targeting state workers in at least 15 public companies.
The state-owned company which saw the biggest turnaround was Petrobras which took profits of 5.1 billion reais (1.629 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of 2017, almost 10 times more than in the same period in 2016.
The debt levels of public companies also dropped, now standing 21.3 percent lower than at the end of 2015, for a total of 428 billion reais (136.7 billion U.S. dollars).
The Brazilian public sector also saw a net reduction of its wage burden, with over 33,000 positions disappearing since the end of 2016, or more than 6 percent of the total.
