ANTT: toll increase will compensate concessionaires for pandemic losses

Losses of revenue for federal highway concessionaires that were affected by the coronavirus pandemic will be made up by readjustments in toll rates charged to users.

The National Land Transport Agency (ANTT), responsible for rebalancing the contracts of companies that manage federal roads, approved last Thursday (4) the methodology that will govern this process, published in the Official Gazette of the Union (DOU) this Monday (8).

To mitigate the impact on drivers, ANTT will be able to implement the recovery of the balance in installments, that is, elaborate a way to dilute the tariff increases.

The rebalancing of concessions affected by the pandemic is a matter discussed for months by ANTT. By law, public service concessionaires have the right to recover their losses when an event not agreed upon affects the financial balance of the contract.

This was also recognized in the opinion of the Attorney General of the Union (AGU), produced last year, when transport services began to feel the effects of the drastic reduction in vehicle travel due to the pandemic.

According to the National Confederation of Transport (CNT), in 2020, the flow of vehicles on toll roads in Brazil fell by 13.1%, more strongly affected by the reduction in light traffic (-16.9%) than in heavy vehicles (-1.1%).

There are several ways for the government to compensate the concessionaire in these situations, including the tariff adjustment – chosen by ANTT in the case of highways -, direct payment for damages, relief in investment requirements and the extension of the concession period, for example .

The impacts for each concessionaire will be measured in the same period in which the companies have their contracts ordinarily reviewed by ANTT. As a result, the methodology published this Monday becomes effective only as of March 3, 2022.

The date was set so that there is no delay in ongoing reviews this year. Thus, the financial effects of extraordinary rebalancing will be perceived along with the ordinary revisions analyzed by ANTT over the next year.

According to the standard, the calculation of extraordinary rebalancing should be applied only for the period from March to December 2020. In ANTT’s assessment, despite the health effects of the pandemic having extended to this year, in 2021 the crisis did not impact traffic of the concession highways.

To measure the effects of the pandemic on concessionaires – which will be analyzed on a case-by-case basis – the projected monthly traffic will be compared month by month, when the health crisis was not on the radar, and the actual traffic in the period.

The calculation will be given from the actual traffic oscillation above or below the upper or lower limits of the 95% confidence interval in relation to the central projection.

For concessionaires of the 1st Stage of the Federal Highway Concession Program, with a final term originally agreed in 2021, the recomposition will be through the determination of assets and duties, which also applies to the concession contracts re-issued, with an addendum entered into until publication of the ANTT resolution.

Users

The option for rebalancing contracts by increasing tolls is displeased by the National Association of Cargo Transport Users (ANUT).

Since the topic has been discussed by ANTT, the entity has been claiming that the agency could have adopted other forms of recomposing the contracts, without increasing the tariff.

“We have always been against this position of only rebalancing through tariff increases. Unfortunately, ANTT did not agree with our position”, said the president of ANUT, Luis Henrique Teixeira Baldez.

The forecast of tariff adjustment with case-by-case analysis, without a general application, in turn, has the support of ANUT. For Baldez, this individual discussion is important so that only concessions really harmed by the pandemic have their tariffs extraordinarily revised.

“We are going to monitor, case by case, whether that traffic verified really impacted the finances of each concession. We are going to follow these calculations very carefully and calmly”, said the president of ANUT.

In Baldez’s view, in these reviews, ANTT will need to take into account cost reductions that the concessionaires eventually had during March and December of last year – which, in the end, could nullify the losses resulting from the reduction in traffic, he argues.

“We hope that ANTT takes this into account,” stated Baldez, who will present a letter to the agency until tomorrow with these considerations.