Sabesp won't cut water investments this year, says governor

São Paulo state water utility Sabesp in Brazil will not be reducing its investments this year, despite company announcement stating that there would be cuts to the 2015 budget, according to state governor Geraldo Alckmin, local news service Estadão reported.

"This year, the company will make record investments," the governor was quoted as saying in the report, without providing further detail of forecast investments or specifics about projects.

Meanwhile, in late March, Sabesp announced a 26% year-on-year reduction in investments to 2.36bn reais from 3.2bn reais and CFO Rui Affonso also mentioned the possibility of further budget cuts during a meeting this week.

For the first quarter of this year, the company reported an 11.6% drop in revenue and a 33.4% decline in profits compared to the same three months of last year.

Besides being Brazil's largest water utility, Sabesp is one of the biggest water and sewage service providers in the world in terms of customer numbers. The company has a market value of some 12bn reais.