Gerdau wants super office for transport area

The businessman Jorge Gerdau, one of the main advisers of President Dilma Rousseff in the private sector, prepared a draft with a decrease in the number of ministries that greatly affects the logistics infrastructure area. Gerdau’s idea is making a radical streamline the offices that deal with this area and join their duties in a super ministry of transport. On Friday last, he met with the president at the Palácio do Planalto.

The super office imagined by the businessman would group the responsibilities now scattered among the very Ministry of Transport, the Department of Civil Aviation and the Department of Ports. It could also manage issues related to urban mobility, currently in charge of the Ministry of Cities. Three regulatory agencies would be under the super ministry: ANTT (land transportation), Antaq (water transportation) and Anac (aviation).

Gerdau interlocutors did not inform whether, in meeting with Dilma, he came to present this ministerial reform draft. The businessman recently criticized the size of the Esplanade of Ministries and advocated a leaner management structure, and he even said that everything has its limit, referring to the proliferation of offices to meet the demands of parties of the government’s base.

Former President Fernando Collor had, between 1990 and 1992, a Ministry of Infrastructure. The difference is that, in the Collor government, this office also encompassed the functions of the ministries of Mines and Energy and Communications. According to the plans of Gerdau, who prepared this draft with the Competitive Brazil Movement (MBC), the super ministry would deal only with issues related to transport logistics – of freight and passengers.

The Department of Civil Aviation was established in 2011 by Dilma, with ministerial status, and the privatization of the major airports as a top priority. Led today by Moreira Franco (of the PMDB party), it has yet to coordinate a broad program of regional aviation, but it has fulfilled its primary mission. The first three airports – Guarulhos, Viracopos and Brasília – were transferred to the private sector last year. The auction of Galeão and Confins airports is scheduled for October. Before that, the airline industry was under the Ministry of Defense.

The Department of Ports, created by former President Lula in 2007, is politically dominated by the PSB party since its inception. Former Minister Pedro Brito and the current Minister Leônidas Cristino are linked to the brothers Ciro and Cid Gomes, from Ceará. It was recently strengthened by the new Ports Law and still will face a difficult task: to promote the bid of more than 150 leasing areas in public ports and coordinate the installation of dozens of private terminals, according to the new industry’s regulatory framework.

The National Department of Urban Mobility, within the framework of the Ministry of Cities, directly deals with an issue that has become sensitive after the demonstrations of June: the release of federal funds for projects of metros, light rail vehicles and exclusive bus lanes in large and medium cities. The office, which also came under the Lula government, has been led by the PP party.

In Gerdau’s draft, each of these areas – civil aviation, ports and urban mobility – could gain specific departments, with strong structures, but always under the same Super Ministry of Transport.