The government called on port sector associations to present, on June 11, the preliminary conclusions of the work that will form the basis for the formulation of a national cabotage plan.
The Spanish consulting firm Idom was hired, through an agreement between the Secretariat of Ports (SEP) and the World Bank, to map bottlenecks and propose incentives for the maritime transport of cargo along the Brazilian coast and the country's waterways.
The government's intention is to launch the plan in the second semester, but questions made by Idom to companies in the sector generated distrust about the content of the measures under analysis. Some of the ideas explored by consultant Luis Pérez Madariaga, who coordinates the work, involve the creation of exclusive terminals in organized ports for cabotage navigation and the loading of trucks on ships, during part of the freight, to continue traveling by road.
According to the SEP, this is a technical meeting to discuss the conclusions of the study with the private sector, in an open and transparent manner. The launch of the plan is scheduled for the second half of the year and this would be just one step towards reaching the final format of the measures.
Navigation companies do not want, for example, their own terminals for cabotage. This is because about a third of the cargo transported between domestic ports, mainly in containers, originally comes from abroad. When they arrive from abroad, the containers are stored; moving them to another terminal would only make the entire moving process more expensive.
The sector also does not welcome the loading of trucks on ships to travel part of the delivery journey by sea or river. They claim that this may work in Europe, where there are more integrated logistics groups, but it would hardly make sense in Brazil — which still has a strong presence of self-employed truck drivers and would require accommodating a large number of workers on ships.
The companies that operate in the sector suggest that the government should act in the regulatory field, without major inventions. For example: simplifying the list of documents that need to be delivered to the authorities at each stop on the ships, such as rodent control certificates to Anvisa and a complete list of crew members to the Federal Police. Often, according to private sources, vessels take time to get rid of all the bureaucracy and start unloading cargo. “The cost of an idle ship is US$30 to US$40 a day,” says one executive.
Another frequent request from companies is for a relaxation of the rule that allows the waiver of hiring pilots — responsible for maneuvering ships to and from ports — when the vessel and the captain are Brazilian.
The current rule allows the Navy to enable the captains of cabotage ships to act as pilots. To do so, however, they need to comply with the requirement of at least 36 port entry and exit maneuvers per semester — a rate, in practice, impossible to meet.
In another line of action, there are suggestions on tax incentives. For companies, instead of offering tax discounts for fleet renewal, the government would do better to give some kind of incentive to products transported by sea within Brazil. The fear is that a cabotage plan faces resistance among truck drivers, with the repetition of situations like the one experienced by Ford, which had plans to transport its cars produced in Bahia by ship, but ended up having to give up.
Source: Price
