Brazil’s Ministry of Infrastructure plans to add two port projects in Bahia and Pará to the government’s privatization pipeline with auctions expected to take place in 2022, the Special Secretary of the Investment Partnership Program (PPI) told LatinFinance on Thursday.
Minister of Infrastructure Tarcísio de Freitas will suggest port operator Companhia das Docas do Estado do Bahia (Codeba) be added to the portfolio at the next PPI council meeting on December 2 and submit Companhia Docas do Pará (CDP) at the meeting after that, said PPI Special Secretary Martha Seillier.
“That will give us some time to structure [the concessions] and hire consultants with enough space between them,” she said, shortly after participating in an infrastructure panel discussion at the Brazil Finance & Investment Forum hosted by LatinFinance.
The two port concessions will take around a year-and-a-half to reach market and are likely be auctioned in 2022, she added.
The PPI program already has several large port projects in its pipeline including Santos and São Sebastião in São Paulo, Companhia Docas do Espírito Santo in Espírito Santo and Itajaí in Santa Catarina.
Four port terminals– two terminals in Aratu in Bahia, one in Paranaguá in Paraná and one in Maceió in Alagoas – are also scheduled to be auctioned at the B3 Stock Exchange in São Paulo on December 17.
The Port of Santos in São Paulo, which is Latin America’s busiest container terminal, will come to auction in 2022, said Seillier.
“It is both a combination of PPPs in terms of contracts, but also a privatization in terms of selling the actual company that’s operating in the Port of Santos,” she explained.
Brazil’ s government released bidding documents for two terminal concessions at the Port of Santos with roughly BRL420 million ($79.1 million) in estimated investments back in May.
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