Waterway: a 25-year private concession

The operation, maintenance, dredging and modernization of the Trunk Waterway (Paraná-Paraguay Waterway), the route through which ~80% of Argentine foreign trade exits, is placed under concession for 25 years. DEFINITIVELY AWARDED (Res. 36/2026 ANPYN, Jun 19, 2026) to the consortium Jan de Nul N.V. (Belgium) + Servimagnus S.A. Estimated revenue ~USD 15,000 M over 25 years via toll. The signing of the concession contract is still pending (max. 30 days from the award); the 13.5% reduction in logistics costs is activated with the signing.⚠️ Three months after the award the handover still had not happened, and it is an act of the State itself that says so: Resolution 105/2026 of the General Ports Administration, dated 4 August 2026, extends a tariff «until the concessionaire effectively takes over the service». And in passing it exposes a stretch that the focus on the big concession was hiding: Section II, «Port of Santa Fe - Confluencia» — the stretch running north from Santa Fe, the one serving the northwest and traffic with Paraguay and Bolivia — has had a full tariff of USD 1.47 per net register tonne since 2022 that was never applied: it was suspended after submissions and court actions by users, and in its place a discount has been rolled over since February 2023 — USD 0.80, then USD 1.20 and today USD 1.30 per NRT for international traffic — through at least six successive resolutions. The reason given in the recitals is explicit: the working group that was to study whether that tariff is reasonable was never constituted, because the technical teams are still busy with the institutional transition opened by Decree 3/2025 when it created the National Ports and Navigation Agency and dissolved the General Ports Administration. verif · Jun 19, 2026 ↗

Awarded on 19 June 2026, but as of 4 August 2026 the concessionaire had still not taken over the service. A later act proves it: Resolution 105/2026 of the General Ports Administration extends a tariff discount «as from 1 July 2026 and until the concessionaire effectively takes over the service of the Trunk Waterway concession, granted by Resolution No. RESOL-2026-36-APN-ANPYN#MEC». In other words: past the 30 days the award allowed for signing the contract, the handover still had not happened, and the 13.5% cut in logistics costs — which is activated on signature — still had not been activated. verif · Aug 4, 2026 ↗

Exporters (agriculture/grains), Greater Rosario and coastal ports, shipping companies; toll users (USD 3.80/NRT initial, rising to 4.65 and 5.78 in stages). prob · Jun 5, 2026 ↗