SHOCK RESIGNATION AT SANTOS

摘要

Casemiro Tercio Carvalho was appointed as President of the Santos Port Authority (SPA, formerly called Codesp), in February 2019. He hit the ground running at the Intermodal South America conference in Sao Paulo outlining his ambitious, indeed revolutionary, programme to many port users and, indeed, to this writer at the time. Among his “avowed intents” was to “kick-start” the stalled privatisation programme at South America’s biggest port for containers (4.3 million TEU handled in 2019) and to make the SPA profitable. With much gusto Carvalho re-negotiated expiring contracts and turned a Reai468.7 million ($125.3 million then, but $80.03 million today) loss in 2018 into a Reais87.3 million ($14.9 million) profit for 2019. Despite COVID-19, a tender process will be initiated in August 2020 for a wood-pulp terminal and a study is underway to pave the way for the privatisation of the SPA port authority itself. Carvalho was hand-picked by Infrastructure minister Tarcisio Gomes de Freitas but, according to three confidential sources in Santos and Sao Paulo, the ex-SPA head seems to have had a disagreement on some aspects of the privatisation processes currently being undertaken in Santos. He also got caught in the crossfire between Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro (the Trump of the Tropics) and Sao Paulo state governor Joao Doria, who will stand against him in the next, 2022, Presidential Election. Doria has been scathing about the maverick president’s “negligent and idiotic” downplaying of the Coronavirus and Carvalho has close links with Doria’s PSDB party.