Neoliberalization of Public Services: the role of the BNDES in Basic Sanitation after 2000

Abstract The article analyzes the role of the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) in the provision of sanitation in Brazil, in order to understand it within the scope of the neoliberalization process underway in the country since the 1990s. After analysing the rounds of neoliberalization in sanitation, the paper aims to understand the performance of the bank in credit operations, from 2002-2018, as well as its role in structuring concession and privatization projects, post-2016. The analysis of the contracts of the BNDES and its role in modeling privatization, concession and public-private partnerships projects, observing the new regulatory and institutional arrangements, allows us to understand the Bank's relationship with the federated entities in the provision of public sanitation services and the new State spaces that emerge from the neoliberalization process. The process of privatization of the sanitation sector underway in Brazil is expressed in the bank's performance, whether due to the profile of the borrowing companies - private and mixed capital companies with open capital -, or when it plays the role of think tank and structurer of models of privatizations and concessions in the basic sanitation sector in Brazil.