Rio de Janeiro – The Managing Council of the Merchant Marine Fund (FMM) approved on Friday (18), after a two-day meeting in Rio de Janeiro, 161 priority projects to receive financing of up to 14.241 billion Brazilian reals (US$ 8 billion). The information was disclosed by the Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Transportation and president of the FMM Managing Council, Paulo Sergio Passos. The projects approved do not include Petrobras drills.
The funds should be added to the 4.8 billion reals (US$ 2.7 billion) of the FMM for 2010. “We are sure that the level of interest demonstrated is associated to the conditions that the country is living and to the important weight due to demands resulting from activities related to the oil area,” said Passos. The perspective, he pointed out, is for growth in coming years.
In the area of maritime support alone, the total investment in the projects should be 5.2 billion reals (US$ 2.9 billion). For cargo transport by Petrobras Transporte (Transpetro), a logistics subsidiary of Petrobras, the financing approved reached 3.02 billion reals (US$ 1.7 billion). Another 4.3 billion reals (US$ 2.4 billion) should be applied in industrial production.
In this area, Passos pointed out the priority established by the FMM to the installation of two large shipyards in Bahia (Bahia and Paraguaçu) and one in Alagoas (Eisa), as well as the expansion of the capacity of another four smaller shipyards – two in Rio Grande do Sul, one in Ceará and one in Bahia.
The president of the National Union of Sea Navigation Companies (Syndarma), Hugo Figueiredo, pointed out that the vessels that present the highest percentage of national content will receive more attractive financial conditions than those that have more imported items. “It is a way of increasing the national content,” he said.
*Translated by Mark Ament