Department of Transportation expects waterway concessions for 2026 | Logistics infrastructure

In an online post, Bourlier said he hopes to publish the Paraguay River Waterway Concession Notice by the end of next March so that the auction can be held in the first half of the year.

According to him, the process is advanced for the Lagoa Mirim Waterway concession in the southern region, which is also scheduled to go on sale in the first half of the year. “We still expect the tender for the Tapajós and Tocantes waterways in the northern region to be launched in the second half of the year,” he said.

During the event mediated by Tais Hirata, a reporter valueBourlier highlighted the strategic importance of waterways for the country, especially for the Amazon region. “Waterways are 80% less polluting than road transport and represent a much lower investment than railways. The planned investment in Ferrograo, for example, amounts to R$25 billion, against a cost of R$500 million over 12 years, in the Madeira River waterway.”

But the deputy director of the Federation of Industries of the State of Amazonas (FIAM), Augusto Rocha, believes that climate change poses a risk to waterway projects. “We need to understand this dynamic better to avoid wasting resources with dredging that will have no impact, as happened in the last drought, in 2024.”

Vice President of the Federation of Logistics, Transport and Shipping Companies of the Amazon Region (Vitramas), Daniel Bertolini, in turn, pointed out that the decrease in navigation capacity in periods of drought leads to the diversion of goods from the waterways to other modes and other ports outside the northern region. “This makes products more expensive and weakens competitiveness,” he added. Bertolini also highlighted the need to consider the bottleneck in port access in the region and pay attention to improving highway infrastructure. “We are in an area that is difficult to access, where a closed bridge could represent a 500-kilometre diversion.”

Wilton Teixeira, director of concessions at the State Secretariat for Economic Development, Mining and Energy of Pará, recognized the logistical challenges that would have to be faced. “We have dozens of mining projects being explored in the south of the state that are not progressing due to lack of access to waterways or railways,” he noted. Another major project to open up logistics for Barra is the construction of a railway line to the port of Barcarena. He added: “In addition to dredging the channels to allow the flow of grains and ores.”

Lillian Campos, Market Intelligence Supervisor at Infra SA, was also present at the event and drew attention to the social impact of developing logistics infrastructure in the Amazon region. “We are not just talking about the economic impact, but the need to connect the riverside communities, which live practically isolated, with the rest of the country. The National Logistics Plan has looked closely at this aspect as well,” he said.

For Alex Dias Carvalho, president of Fiepa, infrastructure progress cannot be paralyzed by environmental issues. “Environmental sustainability is essential, but it cannot serve as an excuse for inertia,” he said. “The region has geographic and logistical characteristics that offer great potential for development, but for this to happen, environmental conservation must coexist with economic and social development.”

Elizabeth Grunwald, president of the Barra Trade Association, believes this development will come largely from the region’s vibrant economy. “There is great potential, but we have bottlenecks in financing as well as in infrastructure and legal security,” he said. For her, the role of the public sector is essential to begin to untie these knots. “There is no private sector investment, without effective public sector participation in infrastructure.”

Despite the bottlenecks, Marco Antonio Migliorini, CEO of concessionaire Centro Oeste Airports and Norte da Amazonia Airport, the latest concessionaire for Belém and Macapa airports, remains optimistic. According to him, in two and a half years, Norte da Amazônia has made mandatory investments worth R$ 450 million in airports and is ready to expand passenger and cargo traffic. He added, “The North region enjoys a strategic location to reach destinations in South America, North America, and Europe.”