In recent years, Brasilia has begun several major initiatives to stimulate public-private partnerships in critical transportation infrastructure projects intended to reduce the bottlenecks that have caused problems in getting commodities to port. Brazil's most recent push to develop its infrastructure began in 2007. By then, underinvestment in infrastructure that resulted from the debt crises of the 1980s and early 1990s had become a serious impediment to growth. In 2007, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched the Growth Acceleration Program, a four-year $236 billion infrastructure development program, of which $27 billion would be invested in transportation infrastructure. However, this program had only moderate success. A second four-year round of the program, launched in 2011, more than doubled the investment goals to $570 billion, $57.3 billion of which is specifically dedicated for transportation infrastructure. It will likely attract investment in the coming months. In May and June, Brazil will auction off nine road concessions and 11 rail concessions, and from November 2013 to February 2014 Brazil will try to auction off a number of private-use port concessions. Halfway into the second phase, the program already has yielded some $14 billion in transportation infrastructure investment. If this rate of investment continues over the next two years, the government will have attracted $28 billion in investment. This is short of the $57.3 billion target, but still considerably above what was raised in the first phase. While challenges remain, the auctioning of concessions over the next few months will likely succeed in at least incrementally increasing infrastructure investment.
