OPINIÃO. Além das urnas: dez anos de PPI

Brazil's Programa de Parcerias de Investimentos (PPI) marks a decade in operation with 385 projects delivered to society since 2016 and roughly R$220 billion in contracted investments, according to a Brazil Journal opinion piece published August 19, 2026 by Adalberto Santos de Vasconcelos, CEO of ASV Infra Partners and a former head of the PPI Secretariat.

The PPI was created by provisional measure in May 2016 and consolidated by Law 13,334 of September 13, 2016, which established a collegiate council to evaluate and recommend priority projects to the President and a dedicated secretariat to coordinate and monitor execution. Of the 385 projects delivered, 90 were completed under the administration that began in 2023, per figures the Casa Civil published in September 2025.

Writing in Brazil Journal, Vasconcelos credits PPI's longevity to its institutional design — it has operated across governments with sharply different political orientations. He highlights the role of the ANTT (National Land Transportation Agency) in improving highway concession risk-allocation matrices, and of the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU), which used consensus-based solutions to unblock commercially unviable concession contracts. Projects the PPI supported include airport concessions covering Congonhas, the new Dutra and Rio-Santos highway concessions, port leases, the Codesa privatization, Eletrobras's capitalization, regional sanitation projects, and rail work on the Norte-Sul central stretch, Fiol 1, and early renewals of the Malha Paulista, Carajás, Vitória-Minas, and MRS networks.

Vasconcelos is measured about what the numbers mean. He argues the auction is merely the entry point, and that the real test plays out over the 20 or 30 years that follow — when investments must materialize, service quality must improve, tariffs must remain sustainable, and contracts must absorb change without requiring constant rebalancing or special legislation. He warns that Brazil still broadly replicates a non-cost-based, price-cap regulatory model across sectors without adequately tailoring it asset by asset, and that rigid contract structures combined with risk matrices that underestimate private partners' actual management capacity convert manageable events into prolonged crises.

On the question of risk allocation specifically, Vasconcelos introduces the concept of "ordinary risks with extraordinary effects" — risks formally assigned to concessionaires whose actual scale or duration becomes so severe that the original contract terms are no longer viable unless risk is shared. Ignoring this distinction, he argues, forces the state into relicitations, renegotiations, and legislative workarounds that consume time, political capital, and credibility.

Looking to the next decade, Vasconcelos calls for the PPI to track the full asset lifecycle — planning, structuring, tendering, execution, adaptation, and termination — and to document not only what was qualified and auctioned but what happened after signing: what worked, what failed, and why. With Brazil returning to the polls in 2026, he notes that whichever government takes office will inherit projects under study, contracts under execution, and decisions whose effects will last for decades. His prescription is that infrastructure should be treated as a national, technical agenda capable of outlasting electoral cycles — the same position he outlined publicly in 2022 without attaching it to any candidacy.