Posted on November 9, 2021
Rio de Janeiro, Nov 5 (EFE) .- The Brazilian companies that were awarded this Friday the rights to operate two port terminals in northeast Brazil, one in the port of Maceió and the other in Areia Branca, pledged to invest 222 million of reais (about 40 million dollars) in its modernization.
The commitment was assumed by the Empresa Alagoana de Terminales, which was awarded the concession to operate the MAC13 terminal in the Maceió Port Complex, the capital of the state of Alagoas, and by the Intersal Consortium, which prevailed in the dispute over the license on the salt terminal of the port of Areia Branca (Tersab), in the state of Río Grande do Norte.
The two 25-year concessions were awarded in an auction held this Friday by the Infrastructure Ministry on the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange and in which the winners prevailed with their initial financial offers, since they faced no rivals.
In an interview with Efe, the Brazilian Minister of Infrastructure, Tarcisio de Freitas, affirmed that the auction will strengthen the sugar sector in Alagoas and the salt production sector in Rio Grande do Norte, both states in the northeast region of the country.
“In the case of the salt terminal, it was essential to improve logistics, because with salt, which is a product with very low added value, we need to be more competitive and not lose market, for example, with the low prices of Chilean producers” , the minister pointed out.
The Alagoana Terminal Company obtained the concession despite having offered only 15,000 reais (about $ 2,678) for the license, while Intersal, also the only bidder, won with an offer of 100,000 reais (about $ 17,857) for the right to operate the terminal.
The national secretary of Ports and Water Transport of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Diogo Piloni, explained that the Government did not intend to obtain high values for the licenses, since the objective of the auction was to guarantee that the concessionaire committed to high investments.
Piloni added that the auction will offer a more adequate infrastructure for important terminals for the Alagoas and Rio Grande do Norte economies.
This is due to the fact that a large part of the sea salt extracted in Rio Grande do Norte is shipped at the Areia Branca terminal, and part of the sugar exported by Pernambuco, a major sugar cane producer, passes through the Maceió terminal.
