Impactos econômicos das operações da MRS nas regiões brasileiras

Abstract

With the expiration of the concession contracts for national railways signed since 1996 with a term of 30 years, several concessionaire companies have initiated the process in advance to obtain an extension of their contracts for the same period from the Federal Government. Among these companies is MRS S.A., whose contract was due to end in 2026, but has already obtained the right to extend it for another 30 years after a decision by ANTT. The railway managed by MRS connects the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, which together have more than 80 million inhabitants and represent the largest regional GDP in Brazil. Since it is located in a region that is fundamental to the Brazilian economy, its importance lies in the fact that it is a logistics sector that makes trade flows possible, including allowing for a reduction in transportation costs as an alternative to highways, which are already saturated due to intense use. The most recent amendment to the MRS concession contract contains the amounts of investments to be made and their respective terms. This made it possible to determine the amount that should be spent in the years following 2026 and to determine the impact that these expenditures will have on the economy, more specifically on regional economies; this monograph uses a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to clarify this issue. To this end, the TERM BR model was adopted, with annual recursive dynamics, which allows for detailed analysis of the concessionaires and national production sectors through a set of equations that describe the behavior of the demand of intermediate and final agents. It was confirmed that the states that benefited most from the investment shock promoted by the MRS were the states of the Southeast region, especially Minas Gerais, with GDP growth of 0.341%, and São Paulo, with an increase of 0.364%. These results demonstrate that, in the coming years, the economies of Minas Gerais and São Paulo may experience several economic gains, but there must be coordination between the public authorities and the private sectors so that these gains are translated into consistent and prolonged growth.