There are several types of port management in this world. A port can be run by a king, a sultan, a federal, provincial, municipal or regional government, or even by private initiative, workers, elected authorities, consortiums, unions...in short, the way a port is run is decided on according to the characteristics of a region, its people, its partnerships, its awareness as to whether it is a public or private institution.    

Regardless of the type chosen, there are some standards that need to be followed: efficiency, honesty, competence, agility, low costs – some of these are givens, for low costs are a result of efficiency, agility, honesty, and competence, while agility is a result of  competence and so on.

In fact, the importance of the type of management is relative, if standards are followed. Efficiency is not exclusive to private initiative, nor are honesty, competence, or low costs. All these can be achieved by public management. Ah, perhaps it’s difficult to achieve efficiency when in order to obtain a screw you have to offer a tender, but there are mechanisms for such situations, for example online and on-site bidding, pre-fixed prices etc.  A good public manager will know how to use these resources.
 
 Whatever the current fashions are, they tend to be favoured in Brazil, but because of their very nature, they come and go. Ah, at the moment it’s public-private partnerships, we welcome this novelty and use the acronym PPP at every opportunity. But how far do analytical studies go to ensure the perfect implementation of this system? Does a PPP system fit where the abuse of political power define the rules of the game? Where anybody can challenge established legislation and postpone indefinitely a port area concession, without following the least parameter, knowing that by the time Justice decides on some dispute, after making use of the infinite resources with which a judgement can be delayed, those who benefit will probably no longer be on this planet any more – if the planet has not already been swallowed by the sun? 

With so much inefficiency and stagnation, so many lost opportunities for domestic growth in an international market that opens its doors to Brazil, which does not take advantage of these accesses, in the face of all these problems, perhaps it’s high time we changed all the preconceived ideas, the following of fads, and discussed technically what the best formula would be to run national ports. It could be that some need to be controlled at one of the many government levels (municipal/regional/state/federal), since their intrinsic characteristics might mean that it would not be viable to have them run privately – cases where revenue cannot generate a reasonable profit margin, but the port is necessary because of its social function. In other situations, perhaps the entire administration can be privatised, or carried out by cooperatives and partnerships. 

In any case, it’s necessary to define clearly the roles of the participating agents. The public authority supervises (correctly), workers do their work (and earn), and companies carry out cargo handling operations (honestly), and so on. And there are clear rules, which do not disturb the efficiency needed by a port, nor leave legal loopholes for greedy and/or dishonest entities to take advantage of. Is this Utopia? Look, other nations have managed it, why can’t Brazil also get closer to the ideal and to perfection? Is the country made up of groups with such different interests that there is no common objective, such as economic growth, the correct flow of goods through the storage, transport, port and shipping systems? In this common objective, will it be so impossible for each group of interests to concede a little so that everyone wins?

In football terms, Brazil is at the goal mouth, there are no players from the other team nearby, the goalkeeper’s far away. Is it so hard to kick the ball into the net?