New concession model will be tested at North-South

The government promises to debut the new railway concession model this semester. The so-called open access model, in which different companies can make use of the same stretch of railway to transport their freights, should be tested in the stretch of the North-South Railway connecting Palmas, the capital of Tocantins, to the city of Anápolis, in the country side of Goiás.

The passage, 531 miles long, is nearing completion by Valec. Through a statement, the state-owned reported that the work will be delivered by the end of March and will perform the assisted operation of the passage until the delivery to the new concessionaire. Furthermore, we reported that Valec plans to deploy the pilot of the new concession model during this first semester in the passage in question, informed the state-owned.

Despite the promise, not everything will be ready in two months. In March, the company promises, the logistics yard planned for the municipality of Gurupi will be ready, but the Anápolis yard will come into operation starting in June.

The new operating model of the railroad intends to break the monopoly which exists in current contracts in the sector, where only one company operates and controls the input of other stakeholders, according to their own interest. The new rules are scheduled to be implemented in the package of concessions for railways already announced by the government.

The idea is that Vale buys, from every builder and operator of the new railways, 100% of the carrying capacity of each section, and thereafter resells this capacity for companies interested in using the logistics network. In the case of the North-South stretch, the situation is different, since the state-owned itself was responsible for building the railway.

The route between Palmas and Anápolis was originally planned for delivery in July 2012, provided that the works of the North-South were taken over by the government of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2007. Irregularities, however, slammed the enterprise.
Today, the North-South already has a stretch in operation granted to the mining company Vale, which operates the rail – under monopoly – between Palmas and Açailândia in Maranhão. It is not yet clear how the open management model will coexist with the current one.