Plan foresees tripling Port of Santos by 2024
Folha de S. Paulo
The port of Santos gained new projections for the handling of imported and exported cargo. The new forecast indicates the port will get to 230 million tons a year in 2024. The volume is 2.7 times the total volume handled last year, when the largest port of the country registered a record level of operations, with 83 million tons - a growth of 2.6%. The new growth plan for the wharf of Santos, presented yesterday during the celebrations of 118 years of the port, will be the basis for the elaboration of the new master plan. The project was funded by the IDB and foresees the use of areas inside and outside the limits of the so-called organized port.
The main concern with the announcement made yesterday, admitted by the port authorities regards what the capacity of the current accesses to the port to support a volume cargo so superior to the current levels is. For the Secretary of Transports, Mauro Arce, the volume of cargo estimated for Santos impresses. "When I hear this number of 230 million tons, I think: can't that be divided with other ports?", he says. Today, the port of Santos is the main destination of great part of the soy planted and harvested in great part of the Midwest and of the western part of the Northeast of Brazil. In 2009, 10.6 million tons of the region were exported by the port of Santos, a growth of 5.3% compared to 2008. Part of that production should not leave by Santos, but by the Northern region.
According to the Minister of the Special Secretariat of Ports, Pedro Brito, the projected growth for the port of Santos will be completely dependent on a new transport matrix. Today, only 20% of the 83 million tons of cargo that go through the port of Santos get to or leave by train. The accessibility study, also presented yesterday, shows that the current railway structure operated by MRS and ALL already have bottlenecks. The situation tends to worsen in the coming years. "One of the conditions to allow the growth of the port of Santos is the change of the transport matrix. The National Plan of Logistics and Transports foresees that. The Government wants to double the participation of the railroads, currently at 13%, by 2015", said Brito.