Brazil & Southern Cone - October 2018

Brazil’s roads are getting worse. At least half the roads in the country will be in bad condition by 2025, according to a recent study by the Fundação Dom Cabral. A separate study by Brazil’s national department of transport and infrastructure (Dnit) found that 59% of federal highways are currently in a good condition, but that number has fallen almost 10 percentage points in comparison with the same study in 2017. In a statement accompanying the report, Dnit said that “the decline coincides with the drop in resources destined for highway infrastructure”.

Brazil has over 1.7m kilometres of roads, but just a little over 12% of those roads are paved, according to the national transport confederation (CNT). A total of 65% of all the cargo in Latin America’s largest economy travels by road, and the highway network is the principal transport system for 95% of passengers. Yet still Brazil trails significantly behind other countries of its size in terms of the percentage of its paved roads, such as China and the US, as well as other Latin American nations, like Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia.

The Dnit study of federal highways – the main roads used by freight lorries – found that 18% are in an ‘OK’ state; 10% in a ‘bad’ state, and 13% are in a ‘terrible’ state. The Distrito Federal, the area surrounding the capital Brasília, came top in the survey, with over 87% of its roads in a good condition, while the Amazonian state of Acre came last: only 25.8% of its federal highways are deemed ‘good’. The south-eastern state of Espírito Santo and the north-eastern state of Sergipe also performed poorly.

Dnit uses a condition of maintenance index to determine the quality of roads, observing the quality of the asphalt, the height of vegetation, drainage, and signage to offer standardised criteria. The Dnit study is the main tool the federal transport ministry uses to assess where to direct resources for building, paving, and maintaing the country’s highway network. In the statement released with the study, Dnit spelt out the numbers behind the decline in road quality. “Over the past four years, the average budget of the transport ministry for the road network fell 28%, from R$9.66bn [US$2.59bn] between 2011-2014 to R$6.97bn [US$1.87bn] between 2015 to 2018.”

While the Dnit survey offers a snapshot of the current state of Brazil’s roads, the Fundação Dom Cabral looked forward to what needs to be done to ensure the network does not deteriorate further. Without further investment, Brazil stands to lose over US$51m in increased transportation costs over the next seven years. The report’s authors recommended that Brazil consider expanding its rail network, rebuild its main highways, and create a north-south connection between its main ports by 2025.

These solutions would save Brazil US$2.9m a year, according to Ramon Víctor César, one of the Fundação Dom Cabral report authors. “In the last 10 years, Brazil has spent 2.2% of its GDP on infrastructure, which means that we are spending badly on maintaining previously installed infrastructure and very, very badly on new infrastructure,” César says. “We should be spending between 4.5% to 5% to guarantee a good standard,” he adds.

Pointing to the widespread impact of Brazil’s lorry drivers’ strike in May, César said that Brazil continues to depend significantly on its highway network for cargo. Over the past decade, the number of motor vehicles in Brazil has grown by 102%, while the number of paved federal highways has grown by just 11%, according to the CNT.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) currently ranks Brazil at 103^rd in a list of 137 countries analysed for the quality of their highway infrastructure, behind Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Argentina. In its ranking system, scored 1 for ‘extremely underdeveloped’ to 7 for ‘extensive and efficient’ Brazil notches up a lowly 3.1. Given the desperate state of Brazil’s public finances, however, it is not clear where the incoming government will find the money for an upgrade of the road network.