A Precariedade do Transporte Rodoviário Brasileiro para o Escoamento da Produção de Soja do Centro-Oeste: situação e perspectivas

The Center-Western of Brazil is known to be a soy production center. At the beginning of the 80’s, because of a governmental fiscal crises, the Brazilian road infrastructure and conservation lost its investment, which reflected on the soy international competition. The main transportation used to deliver this product to the ports at the South and South-Eastern regions is the roads, highlighting the BR 163 and 364 road’s. Due to the inadequacy of the roads to the characteristics of this product, the long distances that have to be filled and also the bad conservation state of the Brazilian roads, 25% of this products sales are already accounted for internal transportation costs. There are a few alternatives appointed, such as road concessions and Public-Private Partnership (PPP). This paper analyzes the use of more efficient transportation modals. The conclusion is that the use of river and rail-road transportation modals are more efficient to transport the soy from the Center-Western region of the country, because of higher energetic and transportation efficiency due to the movement of higher density cargo at higher distances – what would reduce circulation costs.