TRANSPORT-LATAM: Tri-Nation Inter-Oceanic Route in the Works

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Abraham Lama

LIMA, Mar 14 2002 (IPS) - Integration projects aimed at consolidating the post-border dispute peace deal signed by Ecuador and Peru in 1998 will also include Brazil, which plans to participate in the construction of a highway-river-railway route that will connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across South America.

Ecuador, on South America’s Pacific coast, wants to bring to life its age-old dream of gaining access to the Atlantic ocean through the Amazon river – a project that had been frustrated until now by the long-running border dispute with Peru, which triggered three wars between 1942 and 1995.

Brazil, meanwhile, is keen on openning up a route to the Pacific ocean that will provide an alternative to the sea route it currently uses to ship cargo south along the Atlantic coast and around the southern tip of the Americas.

The new inter-oceanic route proposed by Quito would also create a link connecting Brazil’s Amazon river port of Manaos with Ecuador and the northern coast of Peru.

For its part, Peru is eager for river and land routes to Brazil, in order to boost the economy and trade of depressed areas in the northern part of the country.

The proposal was presented to the annual assembly of Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) governors in Fortaleza, Brazil on Monday by President Gustavo Noboa of Ecuador, with the backing of his Peruvian and Brazilian counterparts, Alejandro Toledo and Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

On Tuesday, Toledo commissioned the Peruvian Transport Ministry to design a project to be sent to the International Advisory Committee that under the guidance of the IDB is promoting the financing of cross-border integration projects between Peru and Ecuador.

Shortly after taking office in July, Toledo promised to complete the route that will link southern Peru with Sao Paulo in southern Brazil – the biggest city and industrial hub of Latin America’s giant. He is now also showing interest in the inter-oceanic route proposed by Noboa, which would benefit northern Peru.

The new route will strengthen integration efforts and cross-border initiatives between Ecuador and Peru that were agreed in the peace deal signed by the two countries on Oct 26, 1998, at the conclusion of the peace talks that began in the wake of the last border skirmish, in 1995.

Up to 1942, Ecuador was demanding a piece of territory that would give it a direct route to the Amazon river. But after it lost a war with Peru that year, it gave up that aspiration in exchange for the right to ship cargo on the rivers that run into the Amazon.

However, one 42-km stretch of the border was left unmarked – an open wound which Ecuador took advantage of to keep the flames of the conflict burning, and which Peru used as a pretext to oppose navigation by Ecuadorean vessels on the Napo and Putumayo rivers, which empty into the Amazon.

Mediation by Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the United States was successful in bringing a halt to the brief war between Peru and Ecuador in 1995, and in drawing the two countries to the negotiating table.

The international community, in the meantime, offered three billion dollars for financing cross-border integration and cooperation projects, to be carried out from 2000 to 2009.

The offer included 1.6 billion dollars in soft credits, 600 million dollars in donations and 800 million dollars in private investment. The International Advisory Committee presided over by the IDB has so far received 234 million dollars in donations.

In Fortaleza, the IDB governors discussed the state of the cross-border integration projects between Ecuador and Peru. Noboa, with the backing of Cardoso and Toledo, took advantage of the occasion to present the inter-oceanic project.

Noboa explained that the new routes would include stretches of railway, highways and rivers – “multimodal” in transport industry jargon – and that the cargo would be shipped by container, to provide greater security.

Ecuador will gain access to the Amazon river over three routes, one of which will begin in Ibarra, in the north, and will reach Brazil through the Putumayo river which forms the border between Peru and Colombia.

Another route will start out from Quito, running through Peru along the Napo river, and continuing along the Marañón river, a tributary of the Amazon.

The third route will set out from the port of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s main commercial centre, passing through the Peruvian coastal cities of Tumbes, Piura, Chiclayo and Bayovar – the endpoint of an oil pipeline and a future hub of South America’s petrochemical industry – after which it will climb across the Andes mountains and continue along the Marañón river until reaching the Amazon.

The project “will integrate the Pacific and Atlantic basins, and will make possible strong trade flows between Peru and Ecuador, while providing possibilities for parternships between the two countries in the field of exports,” Noboa said in Lima on a stopover on his way back to Quito from Fortaleza.

“Without a doubt, this is a sustainable project, especially for the people living in the Amazon jungle regions of Ecuador and Peru,” said the president.

“Ecuador has already invested in the roads needed for the project, and we estimate that the highways providing a link with Peru and with the rivers forming part of the inter-oceanic route will be operating by the end of the year,” Noboa added.

Cardoso announced Monday that he and Noboa and Toledo had agreed to make a formal request that the IDB accelerate the disbursement of the credits earmarked for the peace and integration programmes between Ecuador and Peru.

Toledo said in Lima that the governments would ask the IDB to release the financial aid by 2005, rather than 2009, as previously agreed.