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Deficiency of the Brazilian port system
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Centralization is a major obstacle
for the Brazilian port structure
The main deficiency of the Brazilian port
system is a centralization of terminal administration and what determines its
efficiency is not a fact if this administration is public or private, but its
governance in according to the opinion of José Tavares de Araújo Júnior,
director of the Center for Integration and Development Studies (Cindes). “The
centralized system of terminal administration exists only in Brazil. This perhaps
is a great obstacle. A port management must be either regional or local”, he
says.
According to the expert, a study of Cindes
on terminals’ governance compares the situation of ports in Brazil with others
in the rest of the world. “We can find efficient and inefficient terminals of
all sizes: state-owned, like the one in Rotterdam (in the Netherlands); mixed,
like the Chines; and private ones, like the Americans”, he says.
The situation, however, is paradoxical,
says Mr. Araújo. “On the one hand, if we examine the quantitative indicators
right after the Ports Act (1993) until 2018, the performance was extraordinary,
especially in the commodities boom. There was no bottleneck and the performance
went ahead. This is a surprising aspect”, he points out.
“On the other hand, Brazilian ports are
always classified as the worst in the world. This paradox is due to the fact,
that technological modernization has managed to overcome infrastructure
bottlenecks”, he argues. Users consider terminals to be bad, he said, has to do
with the phenomenon that started in the mid-19th century and continued until
the middle of the past decade: the extortion of port operators when they have
no competition.
Governance
“This problem has been solved in several
countries around the world, from China to Colombia, through the European
countries. There is a common thread to everyone, which is called port
governance”, he explains. It is necessary to take politicians out of management
because the source of the extortion is their access to the possible income
derived from ports”, he reveals.
According to the director of Cindes, the
Ministry of Infrastructure, which, in theory, “is one of the most respected in
the current government”, the information was last updated in 2015. “This is an
indicator of our calamity. You want to privatize, great. But the ports should
be governed according to the current rules”, he defends.