By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 4 1998 (IPS)

The numerous river systems of Brazil are now being utilised more for transporting goods rather than just a source of hydro-electricity power, and authorities are looking harder at the rivers in planning economic development.

The river systems, which played a fundamental role in territorial conquest during the colonial period, have regained their importance under the country’s new conditions. Competition with road transport now requires a reduction in costs. Moreover, the agricultural frontier has advanced westward, away from the sea ports, and private initiative to build roads have exposed the real high costs of terrestrial transportation, in a time when exports have become vital for balancing Brazil’s foreign accounts.

Soya beans for example, which are harvested in the central-west state of Matto Grosso, used to be transported 2,500 kilometers by land to the port of Santos, in the southeast, to be loaded onto boats and shipped abroad, at a cost of 110 dollars a ton.

Now soya is trucked 1,000 kilometers toward the northeast, and then transported in small boats through the Amazon river system, to the port of Itacoatiara at a cost of 65 dollars a ton. Itacoatiara, inaugurated on the Amazon river in April of last year, therefore is fast becoming the main exit point for western Brazil.

By the end of 1997, some 321,000 tons of soya passed through that port, a small amount given its capacity to handle three million tons a year. This year, the Maggi group alone from the Matto Grosso expects to export 550,000 tons using that port.

Trade circles say Bolivia would find it advantageous to use Itacoatiara to export the 300,000 tons of soya year that it currently sends to Europe through the port of Nueva Palmira in Uruguay. Luiz Pagot, director of an Amazon transportation firm, says that a reduction in costs of 30 percent, transportation time would be cut from 44 days to 27.

Of the 42 main projects of the government program called “Brazil in Action”, four are aimed at establishing or broadening the river ways. The most important of these is the Tiete-Parana, which crosses the state of Sao Paulo, the most economically developed region in Brazil.

This river system, which benefits four other states in the center-south of Brazil, has a target shipping volume of 35 million tons of grain, according to the Minister of Transportation, Eliseu Padilha. That amount corresponds to almost half of the annual production of grains for the entire country.

In addition, the program seeks to promote the implementation of many development projects in its area of influence, thus generating more than 550,000 direct and indirect jobs, according to estimates of the Agency for the Development of the Tiete- Parana, created in 1991.

The Rivera will connect the major economic centers of the southern common market in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay after the year 2001, if the Brazilian government’s idea to build locks in the Itaipu dam becomes a reality. Itaipu was built in the 1970s to serve the giant hydroelectric plant on the border with Paraguay.

Itaipu is a 120 meter barrier that blocks river communication between Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires. The initial costs for the locks was estimated in 1.8 billion dollars, but was later reduced to 400 million dollars, according to a project of the Federal University of Parana, a state in the south of Brazil.

The Tiete-Parana and Madeira river systems, the most economically important for Brazil, contribute to alleviating the urgency for the so-called MERCOSUR Rivera, through the Paraguay and Parana rivers, which pass through the border between Brazil and Bolivia, and through the interior of Paraguay and Argentina before flowing into the Rio de la Plata.

The Paraguay-Parana river system is also subject to environmental restrictions, as pointed out by many non- governmental organizations (NGOs) and independent studies.

The project contemplates the deepening of the river at certain points, thus increasing its volume and reducing the water of the Pantanal region, a unique humid ecosystem, the biodiversity of which would be affected.

Another system, the Araguaia-Tocantins, also faces environmental obstacles. This system connects the center of Brazil to a sea port in the north. The projects depend on the authorization of the governmental Brazilian Institute for the Environmental, which has sparked some objection from local NGOs.

The river systems have also gained in importance because of the concession of road projects to private initiatives, as part of the government’s program of privatization. The tolls charged by the management firms have increased the cost of terrestrial transportation, which makes up 80 percent of the cargo transported in Brazil.

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