André Ceciliano: Santos Dumont's announcement offends public opinion.

Power Agenda - The president of the Rio de Janeiro State Legislative Assembly (Alerj), André Ceciliano, has signed an article published in today's edition of the newspaper O Dia in which he severely criticizes the federal government's clumsy decision to privatize Santos Dumont Airport and cannibalize Tom Jobim-Galeão Airport.

According to Ceciliano, the current privatization model will make Santos Dumont an airport with a high volume of landings and takeoffs for large aircraft. This is dangerous on short runways like this airport's and environmentally damaging for airports located in the center of a city the size of Rio de Janeiro.

Ceciliano laments that the Bolsonaro administration has decided to ignore calls from all political and civil society forces in Rio against the privatization model. He suggests that Rio's mayor, Eduardo Paes, may be right in suspecting that "there may be something rotten in the air."

Read the full article by André Ceciliano below:

Santos Dumont's notice defies public opinion

André Ceciliano

Despite the opposing views of all relevant political and economic actors in the state, the federal government insists on moving forward with the Santos Dumont Airport concession. It's crucial to understand whether this is simply another demonstration of the federal government's arrogance and disregard for Rio de Janeiro, or whether, as Mayor Eduardo Paes suspects, there are hidden agendas behind such insistence.

Firjan, Fecomércio, the Commercial Association, Rio Indústria, the capital's city hall, universities, Alerj (State Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro) and, more recently, even Governor Cláudio Castro, from the same party as President Jair Bolsonaro: all are opposed to the way the Ministry of Infrastructure is conducting the privatization of the airport terminal in the city center.

Nothing against the concession itself. The problem is that, as it stands, the proposed model will lead to predatory competition, resulting in an even greater depletion of Galeão International Airport, a fundamental hub for the state's economy, not only as a passenger terminal but also for cargo and aircraft maintenance.

To attract more investors and increase interest in the airport, the crown jewel of Brazil's 7th round of airport concessions, the tender does not impose restrictions on Santos Dumont's flight schedule, allowing it to even take over the domestic and international routes currently operated by Galeão. It doesn't take an aviation engineer to understand that the runway, just 1.260 meters long (Galeão has two runways measuring 4,000 and 3.180 meters, respectively), surrounded by sea and located in a densely populated area between the city's South Zone and downtown, cannot accommodate this volume of aircraft.

In Minas Gerais, the logic behind the 2021 concession of Pampulha Airport, awarded by the state government and won by CCR for R$32 million (the same group that already controls the Confins terminal), was that Pampulha should concentrate short-haul regional flights, while Confins should concentrate longer-haul international and domestic flights. In other words, one complements the other. In Rio, the federal government intends to authorize cannibalization. With one detail: according to the current bidding process, the group that wins Santos Dumont will receive four airports as a bonus, three of which are in Minas Gerais (Uberaba, Montes Claros, and Uberlândia) and just one (Jacarepaguá) in Rio. In other words, a great deal… for the people of Minas Gerais.

The Rio de Janeiro State Legislative Assembly (Alerj) has made every effort to prevent this crime against Rio's economy and to help rebuild Galeão Airport, preserving and expanding the approximately 17 jobs currently generated there. In 2021, we approved a reduction from 12% to 7% in the IMCS tax on aviation kerosene for aircraft refueling at the terminal—a measure that, surprisingly, has not yet been implemented by the state government.

We also approved a legislative decree suspending the INEA license for the Santos Dumont expansion project, as the State Constitution prohibits construction on that body of water in Guanabara Bay. We also filed a complaint with the Federal Audit Court (TCU) requesting the suspension of the concession notice, and the court has already questioned the Ministry of Infrastructure about how the airport expansion project would proceed if any landfill work is prohibited at the site.

There were many protests—and not just from the Rio de Janeiro State Legislative Assembly. In response, we heard not a call for dialogue, but an arrogant statement from the Ministry of Infrastructure stating, in short, that Santos Dumont belongs to the federal government and that it can do with it as it sees fit.

It's up to us to answer: a government that, by all indications, will end in less than a year has no legitimacy to carry out a concession that is being unanimously contested by local political and economic actors. This isn't a Shakespeare play or the Kingdom of Denmark, but I no longer doubt that, as Mayor Eduardo Paes suspects, there may be something rotten in the air.

*André Ceciliano is a state deputy (PT) and president of Alerj

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