Private sanitation operators expand to nearly half of Brazil’s cities
Christianne Dias
Divulgação
Six years after Brazil enacted its new sanitation framework, private operators have expanded into 2,720 municipalities—nearly half of the country’s cities—according to a survey by Abcon (the Brazilian Association of Sanitation Companies) reviewed exclusively by Valor. The figure includes both full concessions and public-private partnerships (PPPs), in which private companies operate alongside state-owned utilities.
Private sector participation surged 37% in 2026 alone, largely driven by the privatization of Copasa, the Minas Gerais state sanitation utility, completed in June. The company operates in 637 municipalities.
Sanitation market moves past euphoria phase
After crisis, Aegea calls for up to R$2.1bn capital increase
Since the new legal framework took effect in 2020, the number of municipalities served by private operators has increased sixfold, according to Abcon. At the time, private companies operated in just 7% of Brazil’s municipalities, compared with 49% today.
Despite that rapid expansion, recent water and sanitation auctions suggest private-sector interest is beginning to lose momentum.
This year, both Saneago (Goiás) and Cagece (Ceará) suspended PPP tenders after failing to attract bids. Cagece ultimately auctioned just one of the five lots on offer, receiving a single proposal from a consortium led by Terracom. A similar outcome occurred in Paraíba, where Cagepa’s PPP attracted only one bidder, Spain’s Acciona.
Even Copasa’s privatization, carried out through a secondary share offering, drew just one investor willing to become the company’s primary shareholder: Equatorial. According to sources, a consortium of Aegea shareholders initially submitted a bid below the minimum price. After the process was reopened and the floor price was disclosed, the group opted not to submit a revised offer.
The weaker demand contrasts with the highly competitive auctions of recent years, when investors battled for contracts on Brazil’s stock exchange, B3, and committed billions of reais in concession fees.
Christianne Dias, executive director of Abcon, attributes the slowdown to two main factors. First, states have increasingly opted to structure PPPs, under which state-owned utilities pay private operators, rather than full concessions, where revenues come directly from customers. The latter model is generally viewed as more attractive by investors.
Second, sanitation companies are carrying significantly higher leverage after several years of aggressive bidding that committed billions of reais in new investments. “Interest rates remain very high,” Dias said. “Sanitation contracts require heavy investment during the first years, so operators need substantial financing upfront, while returns only materialize toward the middle and end of the concession. That makes the sector especially sensitive to borrowing costs.”
Industry experts say another reason is that the projects currently coming to market tend to be less profitable and are based on assumptions that investors view as overly optimistic.
“This cooling-off reflects the fact that projects are becoming more challenging,” said Frederico Ribeiro, a partner at consultancy Radar PPP. “They cover more difficult territories, whether because of logistics, large geographic areas, smaller municipalities or populations with lower capacity to pay tariffs. That naturally makes investors more cautious.”
“The auctions that attracted the greatest interest from major investors have already taken place,” added Gustavo Magalhães, a partner at Madrona Advogados. “These include the privatizations of Sabesp in São Paulo, Corsan in Rio Grande do Sul and Copasa, Cedae’s concessions in Rio de Janeiro, and Sanepar’s PPPs in Paraná. There are still important auctions ahead, but the first wave that generated the strongest private-sector interest is behind us.”
As projects become more complex, analysts say governments will need to do more to reduce contractual risks when designing concession tenders. “Some projects haven't been structured with enough rigor,” Magalhães said. “In some cases, political deadlines have led governments to launch tenders before addressing key issues.”
Even so, companies remain interested in expanding, although they have become more selective in evaluating opportunities, according to Luiz Gronau, managing partner at A&M Infra.
Among the largest projects still on investors’ radar are the concessions being prepared by the São Paulo state government, new projects in Rio Grande do Sul, and BNDES-backed initiatives in Rondônia and Rio Grande do Norte.
At the same time, a growing pipeline of smaller projects continues to generate bidding activity, attracting strong interest despite involving more modest investments and less experienced concession operators, Ribeiro said.
“Since April, we've had ten sanitation tenders open, eight of them municipal, in cities such as Lavras in Minas Gerais, Erechim in Rio Grande do Sul, Timbó in Santa Catarina and Tangará in Mato Grosso,” he said. “These aren't insignificant municipalities. It's a more fragmented market, but an important one. We expect this type of project to remain active through this year and into next year, ahead of the municipal elections.”
Beyond launching new auctions, Dias said the industry's biggest challenge now will be delivering the contracted investments and managing how regulators handle requests to restore the economic and financial balance of newly awarded concessions.
“Regulation has improved, but there's still a long way to go,” she said. “Private operators often discover discrepancies between the information provided before the concession and the actual conditions they encounter. Those gaps create financial imbalances that require careful assessment by strong regulatory agencies with less political interference.”
Gronau also sees regulation as the sector’s next major test. “We're entering the first cycle of ordinary contract reviews for concessions awarded under the new legal framework,” he said. “We're beginning to see the tension between what was assumed when the contracts were designed and the realities of implementation. The outcome of these reviews will be an important gauge of how mature Brazil’s regulatory framework has become.”
