Ports provide ocean of opportunity for Brazil

The Global Infrastructure Hub (GI Hub) has appointed Maritime & Transport Business Solutions (MTBS) to support the development and delivery of an early market consultation for the Ports Privatisation Program in Brazil, which is a key aspect of GI Hub’s Brazil Country Program.

MTBS is working with the GI Hub to deliver a structured dialogue between the private and public sectors. Early market consultation is a tool that can provide the public authority with an opportunity to cross-check its thinking with that of private sector specialists, including contractors, lenders, and equity investors, up to the end of the preparation phase. It provides an essential opportunity for the private sector to deliver feedback on how the packaging and scope of the project could be developed to ensure private sector participation and improve competition.

A kick-off meeting was held in April led by the GI Hub and MTBS which involved Brazilian stakeholders from the National Secretariat of Waterways and Ports from the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Secretariat of Partnerships and Investment Programs from the Ministry of Economy, the Planning and Logistics Company (EPL), the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and several major Port Authorities.

Aside from the market consultation and strategic plan, the ports stream of work is also seeing the GI Hub provide public-private partnership training to build capacity within the Brazilian Government. The training includes a series of webinars demonstrating relevant GI Hub tools, and a dedicated training workshop on the SOURCE multilateral platform for quality infrastructure.

Future streams of work under the Country Program are the provision of two initiatives: a benchmarking study on private long-term finance for infrastructure, and a study on leading practices for allocating and mitigating foreign currency risks.

The GI Hub’s Brazil Country Program, which aims to accelerate the development of specific aspects of Brazil’s infrastructure markets, was launched in December 2019 by a Letter of Intent with the nation’s Secretary of International Economic Affairs (SAIN) of the Ministry of Economy. This followed intensive work involving needs assessment consultations with the Government of Brazil, program validation consultations with several Multilateral Development Banks and a full time GI Hub resource on the ground in Brazil.

The GI Hub’s Country Programs are designed to be year-long engagements with individual countries to provide intensive support to their infrastructure programs in partnership with relevant multilateral organisations. The purpose is to deliver direct improvement of measurable outcomes for that country’s infrastructure development and implementation, and to develop learnings than can be assimilated into future Country Programs.