Transnordestina railroad arrives at delivery stage under pressure from ANTT

Under construction since 2006, the Transnordestina railway is about to enter the long waited delivery stage. The schedule defined on the concession agreement foresees batch deliveries in almost every month between August 2015 and January 2017, deadline for the completion of the railroad construction. The owner of the project, Transnordestina Logística SA (TLSA) was supposed to have delivered until now six construction batches, but this did not happen. The company, controlled by National Steel Company (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional – CSN) is responding to administrative procedures from the National Land Transportation Agency (Agência Nacional de Transportes Terrestres – ANTT), which investigates the noncompliance of agreement terms.

According to the director responsible for the railway segment of ANTT, Carlos Fernando do Nascimento, the procedures have the objective of clearing up the fact that in theory, mischaracterize the actual delivery of the lots. ANTT has already confirmed to Valor previous railroad delays, but now they prefer to be cautious. Still, local authority does not confirm the delivery of any sections of the Transnordestina railroad.

Nascimento explains that the delivery homologation process is complex. When the concessionary completes a section, the grantor must check the technical compliance of the works. When the work is not delivered, the focus befalls on the company’s reasons for the delay.

However, to the naked eye, the assessment is far simpler. The Head of Cabinet of Aurora Prefecture, in the hinterland of Ceará city, Sebastião Rangel assures that both sections that connect his city with their neighbors Ingazeira and Lavras are far from being completed. The works, part of the railroad between Missão Velha city and Pecém port, in Fortaleza, should have been delivered, respectively, on April and June this year.

On the railroad’s path there is a school, which must be knocked down, but is still operating normally, Rangel said. Also in June, there should be delivered a Transnordestina railroad section between Araripina city, in Pernambuco and the Piauí border. ANTT is still assessing if the construction is really completed.

ANTT’s demonstration regarding term compliance depends on the result of the administrative procedures under the current law terms, assuring the right to wide defense and contradiction. Thus, there is no current way to assure if there really was a non-compliance of terms, considering that the administrative procedure is under way, local authorities have claimed.

It is scheduled on the agreement the delivery, only this year, of seven sections of the railroad, a sum of hundreds of kilometers of rails. The current work stage does not indicate that the objective will be met, despite the caution demonstrated by the railroad’s regulatory agency. In January this year, however, ANTT had already informed to Valor the identification of delays on the constructions. The lack of enough workforces to perform inspections may help to understand the tardiness in checking on the Transnordestina railroad’s constructions, but ANTT does not confirm this. The agency awaits a decision from the Planning Ministry regarding the request to hire 670 new employees.

Truth is, the relationship between the concessionary and grantor have improved substantially since the ex-ministry and ex-governor of Ceará, Ciro Gomes, has been hired by CSN to take care of the Transnordestina railroad. According to reports, he has been personally monitoring the project’s progress, both taking part in meetings in Brasília and visiting the railroad’s construction sites.

With 1.753 km of extension, the Transnordestina railroad will connect the city of Eliseu Martins, in the hinterland of Piauí, to the Suape port in Pernambuco and Pecém port in Ceará. After some additives, the construction is currently budgeted at 7.5 billion of Reais, but there are people from inside TLSA stating that the complete railroad will cost no less than 11 billion of Reais. The project is virtually financed on its entirety with public resources, mainly local development funds and BNDES financing. TLSA was approached, but it refused to give any information.