Investments to help Ceará reduce travel time, enhance cargo logistics and boost competitiveness
The Brazilian northeastern state of Ceará will receive a $400 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to improve highways and logistics infrastructure, enhancing connectivity between productive regions and consumer markets, and regional ports and airports.
The program will finance the rehabilitation of 560 kilometers of roads and the paving of another 410 kilometers of highways, improve the system’s efficiency. This will allow drivers to stop using secondary roads, shortening the distance to get to their final destination and lowering transport costs. The project will interconnect highways with productive development areas.
In the stretch of highway CE-060, an important road that connects the two largest cities in the state, Fortaleza and Crato, a rehabilitation and result-driven maintenance pilot project will be implemented. This project will help the government evaluate the benefits of a new highway maintenance management standard through an ongoing evaluation of quality indicators.
In order to enhance road safety, the project will identify critical points in roads to be rehabilitated and finance the works needed to improve safety.
In addition to improve the state’s cargo transportation, the project will support the development of a transportation and logistics plan for the state and the implementation of priority actions identified in the state’s master transport and environmental plan. These two actions will be carried by Ceará highway department (DER/CE).
The IDB and the State of Ceará have a history of more than 20 years working on transportation programs. This is the project’s fourth stage, and according to Dalve Soria, the project’s team leader, "the relationship between the IDB and DER/EC has been extremely rewarding in recent years, and we are sure that our joint efforts in improving the transportation of goods and services have contributed significantly to the development of the state and therefore the quality of life of its people."
The IDB’s financing terms are 25 years, with a grace period of five and a half years, and a LIBOR-based interest rate.