Consórcio Novo Caracol was the winner of the auction for the Concession of the State Parks of Caracol and Tainhas, in Rio Grande do Sul (RS), with an offer of R$ 150,000,000.50, which represents a discount of 5,341 .15% in relation to the value of the fixed grant offered of R$ 2,756,771.94. The auction was held at the headquarters of B3, in São Paulo, this morning.
The concession is a project by the government of the state of Rio Grande do Sul to boost ecotourism in the state parks of Caracol, in Canela, and Tainhas, on the border of the municipalities of Jaquirana, São Francisco de Paula and Cambará do Sul. The winner will be responsible for qualifying the infrastructure and services offered to visitors, promoting sustainable tourism and generating income and regional development in balance with environmental preservation.
According to information from the government of Rio Grande do Sul, the concession project is expected to invest R$ 47.6 million in the two parks, with R$ 23.7 million to be invested in the first six years of the contract. In addition, operating expenses of R$ 417.3 million are foreseen over the 30 years.
The director of Concessions and Privatizations of the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), Fábio Abrahão, pointed out that the Brazilian environmental asset market, in this case of parks, is extremely underused, since the average Brazilian does not frequent the natural environment. . BNDES helped to structure the concession, as part of its strategy to add green projects to the privatization program.
“As generations become increasingly urbanized, this distance between nature and people’s daily lives increases. This has important effects on the formation of society, because much of our sense of preservation and identity comes from this experience and Brazil has an incomparable environmental heritage”, he analyzed.
According to him, when the BNDES decided to enter the environmental assets agenda, the objective was, through the parks, to plant seeds for a change of mentality and create the perception of the surrounding population that the park is not a problem. “This is in the short term, also thinking about generating local economy. In the medium and long term, it is to encourage the population to visit and understand nature, to form a sense of identity”.
Abrahão also explained that the other part of the environmental assets with which the BNDES is dealing are state and national forests. “In all, there are 12 million hectares. This is important because it shows that we have a solution in scale for the Brazilian environmental issue. This is the second park auction we’ve held, the first statewide. It is an important region because it has a specific concept, because it is a circuit. We believe that the level of tourist retention there will greatly increase.”
