A promising path

Even in a year that demands extreme care, equipment manufacturers show why there are motives to maintain positive perspectives for the road area

After more than two years with low investments, the road area needs again a positive agenda of inputs to recover a stronger pace. The news is that good expectations for this scenario are becoming real.

The first measure was the return of the Contribution of Intervention in the Economic Domain (Contribuição de Intervenção no Domínio Econômico - Cide), a tax on fuels. Even causing increase in the prices of gasoline and ethanol for the final consumer, this tax may carry out more R$ 12.2 billion for the federal, state and city governments, part of them allocated to road works.

For José Alberto Pereira Ribeiro, president of the National Association of Road Work Companies (Associação Nacional das Empresas de Obras Rodoviárias - Aneor), the return of Cide—cancelled in 2012 and returning now just due to the fiscal adjusting measures carried out by the federal government—is important, but not as much as it had to be. When it was suspended, it was raising R$ 0.28 per liter of fuel (current value would be almost R$ 0.50). Now, it will raise only R$ 0.22 in gasoline and ethanol and R$ 0.15 in diesel fuel.

In addition—according to the president of Aneor—this contribution raised R$ 12.5 billion in the seven years before 2012 and will raise currently a little less (R$ 12.2 billion), but only half of this total will be delivered for the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (Departamento Nacional de Infraestrutura de Transporte - DNIT). “With R$ 6 billion, the government will have to make a Sophia’s choice, since the projects that are being carried out need at least R$ 500,000 per month for their maintenance and more R$ 500,000 for road construction”, says Ribeiro. “In other words, this total per year is not enough.”

But Joaquim Levy, the Minister of Finance, ensures that this calculation is not right, as he explained when announcing the return of Cide in January. With the expectation of raising R$ 12.18 billion with this tax, the federal government will also have revenues coming from PIS and Cofins, that started again to be calculated on fuels from February on and that would be maintained till the start of Cide, foreseen for May. After this month, PIS and Cofins will be reduced, but the funds raised with these taxes will be directed for states and municipalities to allow them to comply with their planning of investments in road construction.

FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION

If Mr. Levy’s calculation will really bring Brazilian public authorities to invest a total close of the needed R$ 12 billion per year, as suggests Ribeiro, it is not already possible to know. But the figures of demand seem to be correct when compared to those coming from the survey of the Plan of Transport and Logistics carried out by the National Transport Confederation (Confederação Nacional do Transporte – CNT), disclosed in August of the last year.

This plan indicates that the country invested an average of R$ 9.8 billion per year between 2007 and 2014 to repair and maintain roads, considering that 79.3 percent of the road network—the most used in Brazil to transport 60 percent of all locally produced goods—are not even paved. This shows that the financial contribution has to be higher.

In the same document of CNT, the evaluation is that the country had to spend R$ 293.8 billion in doubling tracks, in paving or repairing pavements and in building new roads, in addition to the improvement of 77,000 km of existing roads in regular conditions of safety. Dividing this figure through a ten-year period, the government has to invest R$ 29 billion per year in this area. In other words, three times more than the values invested during the last seven years.

In this calculation, road track duplication would use most resources: R$ 137.1 billion for 14600 km. The second largest part of the revenues (a total of R$ 50.9 billion) would be directed for paving 12300 km of roads. More R$ 47.2 billion had to be invested in building 8700 km of new roads.

The document of CNT does not consider concessions and investments in urban mobility that could balance this negative calculation. And this is just what brings good expectations for the agents of this area, including equipment manufacturers.