Railroad concessionaires have practically ignored the new system of performance targets created by the government to avoid concentrating their activities only on the most profitable stretches of the federal network. Its trains are fulfilling the minimum movement of loads in only 189 of the 457 railway corridors monitored by the National Land Transport Agency (ANTT).
Faced with evidence of widespread non-compliance with the targets, the agency opened administrative processes to determine whether there were indeed irregularities or whether the festival of problems was caused by failures in accountability. Two meetings with all concessionaires have already been held at ANTT's headquarters, in Brasília, to demand clarification. The autarchy does not rule out applying sanctions to companies.
The problem revolves around the rules created three years ago to fight against the state of semi-abandonment of much of the infrastructure granted to the private sector. At the time, the government's diagnosis was that the concessionaires had only been adequately exploiting around 11 of the 28 kilometers of the rail network. In more than half of the existing network, considered less profitable, traffic did not even reach one train a day.
To reverse this situation, the railroads gained new performance targets – which is measured in tons transported per useful kilometer (TKU), the reference unit in the sector. The targets, which were established for the entire network operated by each concessionaire, are now defined for each of the railway corridors within the same concession. As a result, it was thought that companies would no longer favor regions with greater demand, making it impossible for small users to sell their production through the rails.
The reality, however, looks different. Of all the concessionaires, the only one that strictly complied with the targets was Ferrovia Tereza Cristina, which operates in Santa Catarina. Even so, the performance was considered an exception by the ANTT, since the company mainly transports mineral coal – an input that feeds the thermal plants in the State and whose demand skyrocketed amid the crisis in the electricity sector.
Even the largest concessionaires, such as América Latina Logística (ALL) and MRS Logística, had a questionable performance. In the case of ALL's southern network, which is 7.265 kilometers long, cargo handling exceeded the minimum required in just 36 of the 104 monitored stretches. At MRS, this occurred on 41 of the 85 rail corridors. The numbers refer to 2013 – the first year effectively monitored by ANTT.
The regulatory agency preferred to adopt a cautious posture in the face of this scenario. “We had a conversation here and came to the conclusion that something was wrong. It was unreasonable to believe that all but one concessionaire missed the target. So we decided to call them here”, says agency director Carlos Fernando do Nascimento.
As they were not included in the original contracts, the performance targets for rail corridors were negotiated with the concessionaires. The targets established that the minimum load had to be transported in at least 90% of the total stretches granted to each company – the rest configured a kind of tolerance margin. “If it stays at 89%, it is already subject to penalties”, explains Nascimento.
From the first rounds of conversations with the concessionaires, ANTT only deduced that there was noise in the communication between government and companies. This would justify, in the agency's preliminary assessment, part of the avalanche of unfulfilled targets. “What we noticed is that there may be non-compliance, but there is also a lack of understanding on the part of the concessionaires on how to inform these targets”, says the superintendent of infrastructure and freight rail transport services, Jean Mafra Reis.
The alleged lack of understanding by the companies led ANTT to establish a process of readjustment of the targets that will be in effect from 2014 onwards. “We are sure of cases in which the concessionaire, when agreeing on the goal, did not understand and committed itself to what it could not fulfill”, adds the superintendent.
In other situations, the suspicion is that non-compliance is not due to “noise” in communication, but possible cases of concessionaires that intentionally assumed targets that they could not meet, with the aim of “reserving” capacity on the stretches. Nascimento guarantees that ANTT will not allow companies to “sit on top” of unused capacity and that free space can be offered on the market. The National Association of Railway Transporters, which brings together concessionaires, declined to comment on the matter.
Source: Valor Econômico
By Daniel Rittner and Murillo Camarotto
