Brazil's government said it was counting on an "explosion" of private investment to help modernize the country's clogged sea ports whose high costs and notorious delays are shredding its competitive edge as a major commodities exporter.
President Dilma Rousseff launched a $26 billion (16 billion pounds) program to overhaul and expand the ports as part of efforts to upgrade Brazil's decrepit infrastructure that is strangling growth in the once-booming emerging market.
Rousseff said her government was seeking to improve the ports through partnerships with private companies, as Brazil looks increasingly to private enterprise to step in and improve public services where the state has failed to do so.
The bidding process that will open next year will favour tenders that offer the lowest tariffs for handling the greatest volume of cargo. That moves away from a prior model of granting concessions to bidders who offered the highest amount to the government to run the service.
"We want to increase the efficiency of Brazilian ports with this partnership, which will make our exports more competitive and increase production," she said. "We want an explosion of investment through this partnership with the private sector."
The bulk of the investment would be made between 2014 and 2017, Ports Minister Leonidas Cristino said and both public and private enterprises will be involved to stimulate competition in the management of the country's ports, he said.
The ports slated for modernization include Santos, which is Latin America's largest port by value of goods moved, Rio de Janeiro, Paranagua, Porto Alegre, Itaqui, Pecem and Suape.
Cristino said a new port would be built to handle cargo in Manaus in the Amazon and a new deep-water port is also planned for Espirito Santo, an oil-producing state on the Atlantic.
Source: Reuters
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