Brazil extends public hearing deadline for US$2.8 billion in freight railway concession

BnamericasPublished: Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Concessions Public Investment Federal Government Freight railway Rail line

The Brazilian regulator, National Land Transportation Agency (ANTT), extended the deadline for the public hearing related to the freight railway concession contracts for a section known as Malha Sul, with capex estimated at 14.3 billion reais (US$2.8 billion), highlighting the challenges the government has been facing in trying to move forward with the concessions agenda in this sector.

The public hearing procedure, mandatory for preparing the concession contract notice, has been extended for 15 days and will now end on August 25.

"The measure seeks to extend the period available for society to evaluate the studies and documents of the future concession and to present any contributions it deems necessary to improve the model," ANTT said in a statement.

The extension of the deadline for the process of drafting the tender notice underscores the obstacles that the federal government has faced in moving forward with an ambitious agenda of freight railway concessions.

The federal government had originally expected to auction, over the course of this year, eight freight railway concession projects; it later reduced this estimate to five, and as a series of initiatives struggle to move forward, even this new projection seems very optimistic.

More recently, ANTT itself stated that perhaps only two freight railway concession contracts will actually be auctioned this year: the EF-118 railway and the Minas–Rio Corridor, both of which may be auctioned in December.

The structuring of projects associated with freight railways is seen as a challenge, as it involves large investment resources, as well as a series of regulatory safeguards to reduce the risks for private companies in such ventures.

In the case of the Southern Network, experts see additional obstacles.

“The federal government has been wrong to define in advance what the appropriate model will be for each railway. The Southern Network, for example, was divided into three parts, but two of them do not have economic feasibility. Only the stretch in Paraná has conditions for sustainable operation,” said Luis Baldez, president of the National Association of Cargo Transport Users (Anut), to BNamericas.

The Southern Network is composed of three distinct segments: the Paraná–Santa Catarina Corridor, the Rio Grande Corridor, and the Mercosur Corridor.

The Paraná–Santa Catarina Corridor concentrates 78% of all cargo transported on the Southern Network and has an extension of just over 1,500 kilometers. The estimated capex for this section is 6.8 billion reais.

In this corridor, the cargoes geared toward foreign trade stand out, handled mainly by the ports of Paranaguá (PR) and São Francisco do Sul (SC), which account for about 80% of the total transported in the corridor.

Grain exports account for approximately 50% of the throughput, followed by sugar, with almost 20%. The flow also includes cargo such as pulp, containers, fertilizers, fuels, and cement.

The corridor also serves the agricultural production of western Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul through the intermodal terminals of Cascavel (PR) and Maringá (PR).

Market and demand studies indicate significant growth in grain handling, which could account for up to 60% of the total transported on this rail corridor, with emphasis on soybeans, corn, and soybean meal.

The Rio Grande Corridor, in turn, has projected capex of 3 billion reais, while the Mercosur Corridor of the Southern Network has estimated investments of 4.5 billion reais.

(The original version of this content was written in Portuguese)