The dream of national integration along the rails cuts through pastures and sugarcane fields to slowly approach the point of arrival. Those halfway there have heard many promises in vain, but watch the emergence of a railroad outline with renewed hope. The construction of the main stretch of the Norte-Sul highway lasted 27 years and became an example of excesses in large infrastructure projects. Its length of 682 kilometers, between the interior of Goiás and the northwest of São Paulo, served as an opportunity for redemption for the state-owned Valec and is taking shape by tearing up red earth farms. Despite the recent progress of the works, however, much of the trajectory of mistakes made in the past is repeated: missed deadlines, contractual amendments and budget overruns.
Last week, Valor's report covered the entire extension of the North-South Railroad, between the municipalities of Ouro Verde (GO) and Estrela D'Oeste (SP). During three days, it was possible to verify that there are sections practically concluded. The problem is the lack of continuity: they live side by side with unfinished earthworks, bridges without headboards and sleepers installed, waiting for tracks that do not arrive.
Completing the works is a crucial part of the country's future logistics map. When the North-South link is completed, grain and ethanol producers in much of Central Brazil will be able to choose between shipping through the ports of Itaqui (MA) or Santos (SP), using the existing network. But, to take thousands of trucks off the roads and reduce the cost of production, until it enters the ships in search of a destination abroad, it is necessary that the integration railroad ceases to be just a project eternally under construction.
Almost all of the money initially set aside for the continuation of North-South has already been used up. The works were divided into five different lots. The original contracts amounted to R$ 2,3 billion and provided for everything to be ready by December 2012. In the latest balance sheets of the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC), the government never mentioned expenditures above R$ 2,7 billion. But contractors' bills grew, due to additives to correct flaws in engineering projects, and now reach R$ 3,3 billion – 73% of this was executed by the end of August. When other expenses are added, such as the purchase of tracks and expropriations, this account reaches R$ 4,1 billion. And it doesn't stop there: Valec will still spend R$ 200 million on “remaining services” that the construction companies were unable to deliver.
“Norte-Sul's hallmark is project speed”, says engineer José Eduardo Castello Branco, who commanded the state-owned company between September 2011 and September 2012, after the ethical cleaning promoted by President Dilma Rousseff at the Ministry of Transport. He was responsible for a general tidying up of Valec, which had faced corruption scandals in the previous administration, but claims that there was not enough time for a “learning curve” with effects in the extension of the railroad.
Castello Branco assesses that the basic engineering project for the Ferrovia de Integração do Centro-Oeste (Fico), an undertaking that has not yet started and is a priority on the list of government concessions, was carried out more calmly and prevented a series of mistakes. There was optimization of the future route and the necessary earthworks. “North-South extension works started with a poor basic project and no executive project was completed. So, to a large extent, the problems ended up replicating themselves.”
More resources injected into the railroad do not necessarily mean gains in construction speed. In any major infrastructure project, it's time to run to take advantage of the last moments of the so-called hydrological window, when the absence of rain allows rapid advances. This turns hydroelectric power plant sites, for example, into a real fight against the clock at this time of year.
A few days ago, under the burning sun at the end of the drought in the interior of Goiás, half a dozen workers were calmly dedicating themselves to the installation of sleepers in one of the stretches under construction of the Norte-Sul. It was the only activity that could be seen for dozens of kilometers around the municipality of Palmeiras. There was no point in speeding up this part of the work because only 3,1 of the 15 tons of rails needed in that lot are available. “The rest is still coming from China,” said the person in charge of the work, who asked not to be identified, recalling the soap opera surrounding the acquisition of rails by Valec last year.
The sequence of failures in the state-owned company's bids for the North-South extension was pointed out by audits by the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU). One of the determinations of the control body was the removal of helicopters from the list of services contracted by the state-owned company with contractors. For the auditors, in one of the railroad lots, the use of helicopters “was given to supply the needs of the central administration” and had “no direct relation with the execution of the work”.
It was soon realized that the shortest distance between two North-South points is rarely a straight line. One of the inspections by the TCU detected overbilling in the transport of stone materials to the railroad construction sites. In one of the lots, Valec paid the contracted contractors for an average distance traveled of 79,4 kilometers, in the case of the gravel that was being used. The real distance, as verified by the auditors in the field, was 4,5 kilometers between the quarry and the work.
The North-South extension, which should have been ready by the end of 2012, has been postponed. The amendments signed by Valec set this deadline for June and then for December 2014. Now, the promise is to deliver it in October 2015. From what can be seen throughout the works, without even earth moving at certain points, it is a difficult goal to meet. A consortium of construction companies has just been contracted for BRL 183 million to carry out, within a period of up to 15 months, the remaining works on a stretch of 6.370 meters.
The Mixed Cooperative of Rural Producers of Southwest Goiano (Comigo), which brings together 6,3 producers and earns R$ 2,5 billion per year, does the math on how much it could save if the railroad was actually working. The president of the cooperative, Antônio Shavaglia, says that freight to the ports of Santos or Paranaguá, by truck, consumes around 40% of the value received by producers. “But the truth is that we never know when it will end”, he laments.
Like a Mexican telenovela, the North-South saga is not as close to its final chapter as it might seem. The government has plans to extend it to the port of Rio Grande (RS). Feasibility studies for the new section have already been contracted. Due to the pace of construction of the railroad, however, perhaps the end of this drawn-out story can only be told in a few decades. (Contributed by Ruy Baron)
Source: Valor Econômico
By Daniel Rittner | From Palmeiras (GO), Rio Verde (GO), Iturama (MG) and Estrela D'Oeste (SP)
