President Rousseff Supports Opening of Ports to Private Sector

President Dilma Rousseff defended the September 27 opening of ports to private investment and highlighted the Provisional Measure 595 – setting up the new rules for the port sector.

By Pedro Peduzzi and Danilo Macedo – Agência Brasil

“Brazil has to open the harbours. We have a huge and unnecessary cost in harbours. Opening the harbours does not mean to cut 1 mm of rights of the harbours workers. In contrary, we kept intact the procedure in which these rights were secured. But this implies necessarily to introduce competition, because one of our costs, the so-called Custo Brasil, are the harbours, “argued the president, while attending the meeting of the Economic and Social Development Council (CDES), at Palacio do Planalto.

The Minister of the Special Secretariat of the harbours, Leonidas Cristino, reiterated on February 26^th that the goal of the MP 595 was defined from a diagnose of low efficiency in the logistics in production outflow and the eminent depletion of installed capacity. According to him, by 2015, the capacity of the Brazilian harbours will not match with the demand, which has been evolving every year.

On September 27th speech, the president also said that the railways should also be benefit from the public-private partnerships. “We made a huge effort in the field of infrastructure and we want this effort to pay result. We’re doing a international presentation in some major centers. We believe that Brazil needs a simple highway model already tested. The country [also] needs of railways and waterways. It is impossible to continue transporting iron ore and grains by road only. The model of railroad will be now subject to the evaluation of the private investors nationally and internationally. We want this solution to be enormously successful”, she said.