On April 25, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff traveled to the northeastern city of Barcarena in Para state to attend the opening ceremony of the Miritituba-Barcarena port complex. The $320 million complex has two terminals — one in Miritituba on the Tapajos River and the other at the Port of Vila do Conde in Barcarena on the Para River. The terminals will handle grain shipments from Brazil's landlocked state of Mato Grosso and ease pressure on Brazil's overloaded Santos and Paranagua ports in the southeast. To reach Barcarena, Mato Grosso's grain will first travel 965 kilometers (600 miles) by truck from the interior along highway BR-163 to Miritituba. There, the shipments will be offloaded onto barges and taken down the Tapajos River, which runs through the Amazon rain forest. Although highway BR-163 is in disrepair, the new route will cut transportation time by 20 percent and reduce costs substantially. The project is just one component of Brazil's broader push to open up the "northern exit" for grain shipments to Europe and Asia via the Atlantic Ocean.
