"We've begun the negotiating process that necessarily involves the shareholders, but which is in development and I don't want to talk about the details of it in this phase," Pedro Marques said after his first official engagement as minister, a congress in Lisbon on electronic public tendering.


Marques said that he hoped "as quickly as possible so that TAP can have stability and continue to grow". He added that the government remained "firm and determined to recover the majority of the [share] capital for the state", describing TAP as "a strategic company for Portugal, in the country's economic development and in its relationship with Portuguese-language countries."


He declined to comment on a recent statement by TAP's chief executive, Fernando Pinto, who said that reversing the privatisation would be difficult, adding that the company had already spent half the €180 million that flowed in as a result of the deal.


Under the final privatisation accord signed on 12 November, the Gateway consortium, jointly owned by Portuguese coach magnate Humberto Pedroso and Brazilian-American airline operator David Neeleman, took a 61% stake in TAP.


The deal went ahead although the right-of-centre coalition government was acting in a caretaker capacity at the time, following the 4 October general election, and the opposition Socialist Party had stated its intention of reversing it. It has since taken over the government.