Just investments in new leases should reach R$20 billion
Tatiana Bertolim
One year after the port reform was implemented, adjustments are still missing in order to bring investments to the industry. Although the Law of Ports has brought advances, the tender process for new leases involves failures in feasibility studies and discrepancies in regulations, while the need of moving cargoes in Brazil keeps on growing. .
“The law was very good. It has given the market and exporters some relief because without competitiveness prices would just go up. But at the time of regulating it, the government made a mess”, states Marcos Vendramini, general manager of Moffatt & Nichol Engineering and Consulting, specialized in port infrastructure.
The big bottleneck, says Marcos, was the path taken by the government to give a model to new concessions. For the purpose of speeding up the process, the public authority gave Empresa Brasileira de Projetos (EBP) – contracted without any tender – the task to do the feasibility studies for 159 port terminals. Additionally, the state company should be paid back R$400 thousand for each study. “It was like putting the fox to take care of the henhouse”, he says. Within three months, the job was done. However, contracting EBP was questioned and only in May did the Tribunal of Accounts of the Federal Government (TCU) voted for the release of the studies, but expectations are that the Public Prosecution Service will also intervene in the case, which should result in new delays. New invitations to bid will come out for new leases only after the problem has been solved.
Even if the imbroglio is solved, the problems will not be over. Marcos points out a series of technical flaws in the feasibility studies. “If a company makes a proposal based on those studies, later it will see that it is unfeasible”, says he. When finally the knot is untied, that consultant estimates that between R$15 billion and R$20 billion will be invested in new leases in five years.
In addition to the tenders, the process of having the ongoing contracts signed before the current law was passed adapted to the new law has been slow. The first of the so-called “adhesion contracts” was only signed at the end of June. There, ADM Ports was authorized by the National Agency of Water Transportation (Antaq) to explore Ponta da Montanha terminal, in Pará, to move grains. There are over one hundred contracts of terminals for private use that have still to be adapted, but no date has been scheduled for the completion of this process.
The system lacks agility
Another controversial point in the new legislation is that it centralizes in Brasilia – in the Special Department of Ports (SEP) and in Antaq – the planning and power to make decisions in the area, thus emptying the dock companies and the Council of Port Authority (CAP). As some specialists see the matter, the model removes agility from the system. “It causes rework and increases port costs”, states Wagner Moreira, technical director of the Brazilian Association of Port Terminals (ABTP). In a seminar on infrastructure held at the end of May by the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp), SEP special assistant José Newton Barbosa Gama defended the centralization by saying that the law has brought a re-accommodation to the area. According to him, port authorities will now focus on directly administrating the ports.
Passed on June 5, 2013, the new Law of Ports (12.815/13) has brought as significant change a permit for a private initiative to be able to invest in private terminals to move third parties’ cargoes. Until then, private companies could only operate terminals to carry their own cargoes. With the new law, one of the disincentives in the area has been equated, which had already been imposed with decree 6.620 of 2008.
According to SEP estimates, the port reform will have generated R$54.2 billion investments by 2017, therein included funds of the Government and private moneys. Out of that total, expectations are that R$31 billion will be implemented from this year until 2015. However, those projects will only leave the shelf when the bottlenecks still making their execution difficult have been solved, which does not seem very easy.
In parallel to the delays in the new leases, legal insecurity still remains as to the renewal of areas already leased. Contracts signed before 1993 were entitled to be extended, but the new law reads that they will be tendered when they end. To go on active, some terminals have taken legal action and are operating under injunctions. “They have not been given the right to adapt and renovate they deserve, which has caused legal actions to be filed investments to be interrupted in more than 21 terminals”, observes Moreira, with ABTP.
While a final solution is not found, some companies are renovating contracts earlier, once they would only end within a few years. On the other hand, they are closing deals to make immediate investments to increase the terminals’ capacity.
Reform did not bring lower costs
In the first set of authorizations in this matter, Antaq has approved an early renovation of contracts of Copape and Ageo, which operate with liquid cargoes at Port of Santos. On the other hand, over R$200 million will be invested up to 2017. At least 40 requests more, which may sum up some R$10 billion investments, are waiting to be approved.
Considering the knots still strongly tied in the port area, the reform has not brought lower costs to carry cargoes as expected with the increase in competition. Additionally, the system will operate with asymmetric prices at public ports once the former tenders had as criterion the value of the adjudications and the new ones will be based on the concept of low prices.
For some users, Antaq’s lack of control over ship builders can also play against lower costs, because there is no guaranty that the savings made by the navigation companies will be passed on. In a recent interview, the founder of the Association of Port Users of Santa Catarina (Usuport), Osvaldo Agripino, said that the navigation companies are the ones who choose the terminal and Antaq has no power to interfere.
Therefore, although the evaluation in the market is that the port reform has moved ahead in the correct direction, the first anniversary of the new legislation was marked more by expectations than by accomplishments. It is still necessary to solve inconsistencies and reduce red-tape.
Fonte: Revista O Empreiteiro
