Anuário da Indústria de Implementos Rodoviários 2018

71 T he nineteen best highways in Brazil are still this under concessions, according to the latest study by the National Transport Confederation (CNT). However, quality indices on privately managed roads fell slightly in 2017 in another reflection of the economic crisis. The CNT survey of highways in 2017 assessed 105,814 km of roads and showed that 25.6% of those managed under concessions were classified as regular, bad or very bad, while 74.4% were excellent or good. In 2016 the figures were 21.3% for regular, bad or very bad and 78.7% for excellent and good. On the roads managed by the public sector the situation was much worse - 70.4% were rated as regular, bad or very bad, and 29.6% were rated as excellent or good. In the 2016 survey, these percentages were 67.1% and 32.9%, respectively. The survey also identified 363 highway sections with critical points, such as broken barriers (17), collapsed bridges (5), lane erosion (103) or stretches with pot holes (238). Only one such occurrence was on a highway managed under concession. The federal network has almost 70,000 km of roads and public investment has been too low to solve the problems over the years. This is what the coordinator of statistics and research at CNT, Jefferson Cristiano, says. “The average of R$ 160 million per kilometer is very low compared to private investment, which reaches R$ 354 million per kilometer. Private initiative invests about two and a half times more,” he says. But why, then, have the ratings of regular, bad or very bad increased in the roads managed under concession? According to Cristiano, the main problems were in new concessions, in what is called the third stage, from 2013/2014. “These concessionaires, from 2013 to 2015, ended up making a relatively high investment. By 2012 it was about R$ 4 billion on average. Then in 2013, 2014 and 2015 it reached R$ 6.9 billion, on duplication work so that they could charge tolls,” he explains. But after doubling many of the roads under contracts, these companies had problems when the economic crisis worsened and the flow of vehicles was affected and, as a result, their revenues fell.” In addition, finance from the BNDES has become harder to come by, “ he adds. For these reasons, stretches of roads under concession in recent months have been returned or are in difficulties. This is the case of BR-040 between the Federal District and Juiz de Fora (Minas Gerais): the concessionaire Inver has asked the National Land Transport Agency (ANTT) to give the highway back. In another situation, the BR-153 concession, between Goiânia (Goiás) and Gurupi (Tocantins), managed by the Galvão Group, has been canceled. There are also problems with BR-163 (Rota do Oeste), BR-050 (MGO Rodovias) and BR-060/153/262 (Triunfo Concebra). Bureaucracy The Brazilian Highway Concessionaires Association (ABCR) says that some federal concession contracts have faced problems such as non-approval of the financing promised by public banks, difficulties in obtaining environmental licenses that delayed construction schedules or increased prices of inputs controlled by the government, such as asphalt, which has risen by 87% since 2014, thereby jeopardizing investments. Other aspects involve legislation. The federal government issued two provisional measures to address this issue, one of them, MP 752/16, was made into Federal Law 13,448 / 17 which defined the agreed return of concessions facing problems. MP 800/17 would have extended the term of financing for concessions, facilitating the management of the contracts and giving them a lifeline, but had was not approved in time by Congress. The ABCR says that in practice the BR-153 concession did not even exist - the concessionaire faced problems and the contract expired. The manager of BR-040 expressed an interest in returning it but Law 13488/17 had not yet been published by the closing of this edition. Even with these difficulties, the ABCR expects an improvement in the economy will contribute to investment by the concessionaires in 2018. It believes the prospects in state concession programs are good. Sao Paulo held Brazilian highways managed under concessions suffer small declines in quality and the sector awaits economic recovery and government decisions to increase investments On hold