Sabesp Funding Diversity Protects Company From Crisis, CFO Says

Cia. de Saneamento Basico do Estado de Sao Paulo (SBS) is prepared to weather a credit crisis as Brazil’s biggest water utility reduces reliance on international capital markets, Chief Financial Officer Rui de Britto Affonso said.

“We have several funding resources,” Affonso said in an interview in New York. “If international markets dry up, we can go to the domestic market. We also get long-term funding from entities like the International Monetary Fund that guarantee a stable stream of investments.”

Foreign capital markets represented 11 percent of Sabesp’s debt at the end of 2011, compared with 24 percent in 2002, according to company data.

To contact the reporter on this story: Veronica Navarro Espinosa in New York at vespinosa@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net