Opening of the skate bus market at ANTT – 07/06/2023 – Panel SA

The STF decided that the interstate bus market should be opened to new companies through authorizations, but the National Land Transport Agency (ANTT) maintains restrictions on opening in the proposed regulation under discussion this week.

Documents referring to the proposed new framework were available until Monday (3). Since Tuesday (4), they have been kept confidential.

The situation is unusual because, this Thursday (6), ANTT opened the public consultation on the proposed regulatory framework without it being known by the sector.

The Brazilian Association of Mobility and Technology (Amobitec), which had access to the documents on Monday, assesses that restrictions on the entry of new companies into the market have remained.

For the entity, this goes against the decision of the STF, which, in March of this year, judged constitutional the law that imposes the authorization regime for interstate land transport.

The companies questioned the agency about secrecy, but received no response. They consider it to be a move to gain more time.

The opening of long-distance bus routes is similar to what was done with the railways which, through a new legal framework, began to be built under an authorization regime.

In this modality, the project risk is fully borne by the private sector and the fare price becomes free —the government does not regulate.

In the past management, ANTT began to open the market and, between mid-2019 and March 2021, granted authorizations that allowed 22,620 interstate connections.

The approval of the requests would represent an increase of 22.1% in the total number of municipalities served, with a potential increase in users of around 9%, which represents more than 13.5 million Brazilians.

After that, there were questions before the STF and also at TCU. With the approval of both courts, it was up to ANTT to define the operating rules of the companies.

With Diego Felix

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