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27 de novembro de 2012
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Partnership between public and private sectors may be solution to bottleneck

Package of investments in seaports aims to increase the number of terminals, improve access and modernize management structures

Brazil’s entire complex of ports presently moves 886 million tons of goods per year and handles, all by itself, 90% of the nation’s imports and exports. The Brazilian system of ports consists of 37 public ports, which include seaports and river ports. Of this total, 18 are delegated, under concession or are authorized to operate by state or local governments. There are also 42 private terminals and three port complexes that operate under concession to private enterprise. This timid structure, however, is insufficient to meet demand and can become a major bottleneck for the country's development. To try to remedy this scenario, Brazil’s federal government is preparing a program of investment designed to attract private capital to the sector.

The package of measures is aimed at increasing the number of terminals in the country, according to Bernardo Figueiredo, president of the government’s ‘Empresa de Planejamento e Logística’ (EPL - Planning and Logistics Company). According to Figueiredo, the government has not yet established the model of investment that is to be adopted. “We will evaluate all the alternatives to generate investments. The priority is to generate port capacity to meet demand by 2030. We are identifying the best way to do this,” said Figueiredo. The expectation is to implement an aggressive investment program to tackle the main outstanding problems and expand the operating capacity to overcome the risk of a logistics bottleneck.

The estimate is that, in order to gear up to handle the demands of domestic and foreign trade, the port sector needs to receive investments of R$ 30 to R$ 40 billion (US$ 15 Bn to US$ 20 Bn) by 2030. Government sources also realize that, by 2014, R$ 500 million (US$ 250 Mio) in federal funds will be invested just in computerizing the management of the country’s main ports. The funds will be used, among other things, in the installation of radars and cameras to monitor ships and weather conditions - a system which is already old and commonplace abroad but still nonexistent in Brazil.

Access is a critical key point
Another critical issue involving the structure of Brazilian ports is access. According to the government's own survey, of all the investments to be made by 2030 to solve the problems of Brazil’s ports, 65% will be allocated to accesses. Only 35% will actually be applied to remedy the deficits in port areas. Dredging alone is expected to cost some R$ 1.3 billion (US$ 650 million) of which R$ 200 million (US$ 100 Mio) is just for investment in the Port of Santos.

According to the ‘Federação Nacional das Agências de Navegação Marítima’ (Fenamar - National Federation of Maritime Navigation Agencies), access by sea to Brazilian ports has improved thanks to the ‘Programa Nacional de Dragagem’ (PND - National Dredging Program). But bottlenecks persist in access by land. An example of this situation is the Port of Paranaguá, in the state of Paraná, where peaks in the harvesting of grain, combined with the shortage of efficient accesses by road or rail, have resulted in an accumulation of grain trucks along the shoulder of the BR-277 highway; the main link by road to the terminal. Grain trucks line up bumper to bumper for up to 35 kilometers, according to road concessionaire Ecovias.

But the situation has already been worse. At the beginning of the last decade, prior to the implementation of ‘anti-line’ standards, lines of trucks were over 100 km long, passing through Curitiba and reaching cities in the metropolitan area.

A similar situation occurs at the Port of Santos. Since 85% of all the goods handled at the port access or leave the piers of Santos by truck, and that these piers receive about 5,000 trucks daily, lines kilometers are always forming, extending beyond the gates of the port all the way to the Anchieta Road. According to ship owners, trading companies, exporters and importers, traffic jams of trucks inside the port area are frequent. Railway infrastructure is also a problem that must be solved at the same time as the difficulties in the surrounding roads on the perimeter of ports since train lines disrupt traffic and create traffic jams of trucks and trains.

The difficulties of access to ports generate a cascade effect, with a rise in freight transportation prices, loss of perishable cargoes, increased travel time for ships, and loss of productivity and competitiveness of Brazilian products in foreign markets. In Paranaguá, for example, the average waiting time for docking of vessels is eight to ten days. However, at the peak of the harvest season, one can find waiting periods of up to twenty-five days.

At the port of Aratu (state of Bahia) where there is a strong demand in the shipment of fertilizers, ships have to wait an average of seven-days to dock. At the Port of Itaqui, in Maranhão state, the average waiting time used to be up to twenty-two days. With the dredging of the berth 101, waiting time has been reduced to fourteen days.

The government has implemented a few actions to increase port efficiency, informs Luis Cláudio Santana Montenegro, director of port information and systems at the Special Secretariat for Ports. According to him, of the total investment of around R$ 3 billion (US$ 1,5 Bn) annually scheduled for the next two years, much of it will go toward improving access to the ports by road and rail. Among the works that are considered priorities by the government are the North-South and the Transnordestina railways, especially the segments between Salgueiro (PE) and the port of Suape, in the Metropolitan Region of Recife, and the Port of Pecém in the state of Ceará; the duplication of 110 km of railways connecting the Port of Paranaguá to Curitiba; and the ‘Perimetral’ of  Santos.

 

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