Brazil to Sell Steel Firm: Brazil’s ambitious...

Brazil to Sell Steel Firm: Brazil’s ambitious and controversial $18-billion privatization program came alive as President Fernando Collor de Mello put a price tag of $1.6 billion on the giant steelmaker Usiminas, the first state company to be sold. Bankers say the sale of the steel company, generally considered one of the government’s best assets, must be a success if Collor is to have any chance of meeting his target of raising $18 billion from privatization by early 1992. Collor has made the sale of state-owned companies a key plank of his program to modernize Brazil’s struggling economy, and ministers at a palace ceremony stressed the importance of what they termed “the end of government interference in the economy.”