Porto de Navegantes, at US$229.1 million, is the biggest private investment in Brazil’s port sector, but no date has been set yet for the inauguration.

The undertaking, located on the Itajaí-açu river on the northern coast of Santa Catarina state, has the works ready to begin operations, but it still has not presented all the documents for the Custom house and the security plan to the Federal Revenue (RF).

RF said that the Custom house process, which guarantees fiscal security of the entry and exit of merchandise, demands a series of basic conditions whose implementation depends on the interested party. It discarded any problem related to personnel and said the employees that work at Itajaí Port at Braskarne, at Navegantes airport and at EADI and Redex will be the same as at Porto de Navegantes.

A second question at the port is the security plan, which has still not been concluded. The programme should be presented to the National Committee on the Security of Ports, Terminals and Navigable Routes (Comportos), created after the episode of September 11, 2001 in the US for the enforcement of anti-terrorism controls.

Portonave began the process of Custom house certification six weeks ago and a reasonable time to complete it would be two months. RF said the new outlook for inauguration of the undertaking is November.