Port terminals can be granted, port authority not, says Márcio França

The country’s port and airport concession policy will be reviewed and port authorities such as the one that manages the Port of Santos will no longer be transferred to the private sector, said this Monday (2) the minister of the area, Márcio França, adding, however, that port terminals may be targets for concessions.

França took office this Monday as Minister of Ports and Airports, a ministry created by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The folder was previously inserted within the Ministry of Infrastructure.

“There are no problems with privatizing the terminals, we would like the terminals to be privatized, but we are not going to privatize the port authority,” França told journalists after the inauguration ceremony in Brasília.

“The problem is imagining that the port authority can be privatized. It is a completely wrong alternative, so wrong that in four years they managed to grant a single port in Brazil”, said the minister, referring to the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro. “The correct calculation was not made from the risk point of view.”

The privatization of the Port of Santos, the largest in Latin America and responsible for around 30% of the country’s cargo movement, was considered one of the main infrastructure projects of the Bolsonaro government. But the plan was delayed and challenged by the TCU (Union Court of Auditors). Only the port authority responsible for the Port of Vitória (ES) was awarded to the private sector, in an auction held last March.

The French ministry is responsible for 220 port terminals for private use, 43 transfer stations and more than 342 registered terminals.

“It is not true that being public is not efficient. We need to learn that public can be efficient”, said França, stating that a good part of the port and airport system has a surplus.

AIRPORTS

Questioned about airport concessions, such as Santos Dumont, in Rio de Janeiro, which until last year had an auction scheduled for this year along with Galeão, also in the Rio de Janeiro capital, França said that the assets that return to the State will be managed and that the terminals already granted will have respected contracts.

Still according to the minister, who said he had not yet had a chance to discuss the portfolio with Lula, the state company that manages federal airports, Infraero, will be strengthened, and the government will launch a program to build new regional airports.

“It has a budget, what I think is that there is a folklore of numbers. A small airport costs BRL 40 million to build. The problem is having a flight. If there is a flight, there is a boarding fee”, said França.

“We are going to encourage regional airports with fewer passengers to use smaller planes. This could be a great solution for national integration,” said the minister.

He also added that the government could create incentives for airlines to create more flight alternatives “if the economy grows again”.

“The projection is that we can return to previous numbers (of pre-pandemic passenger transport) and have new regional airports, with reduced planes, which is the easiest way to get it right”, said França without giving details.