President Dilma Rousseff visits huge North East development

Those who are interested in the near-revolutionary affordable homes scheme ' Minha Casa Minha Vida ' naturally keep an eye on housing projects of this type in the whole country. But for many, the North East of Brazil in particular provides useful insights into how such approaches can best work. Indeed, they indicate infrastructure developments needed to allow them to work at all. A case in point (obviously among others) is the Arco Iris programme of construction at Natal.


However, taking a wider view, it would be hard to exagerrate the importance of two interconnected things. These are reliable water supplies for the people on the one hand and good transport connections on the other.

On Wednesday this week President Dilma Rousseff started an important ‘tour of inspection’ visit to a massive infrastructure and environmental project in the Region.

It is the Sao Francisco River irrigation and water-supply scheme, designed to provide secure supplies to a huge area of nearly 400 towns and cities (plus their surroundings) comprising twelve million people.
It includes a canal, pumping stations, aquaducts and reservoirs plus of course linking conduits of various sizes.

A parallel and connected endeavour is the Transnordestina railway project of over 1700 km altogether. This is intended to link inland areas to the Atlantic ports of Pecem and Suape.

The whole approach takes in all or part of the states of Ceara, Pernambuco, Paraiba and Rio Grande and the work (parts of which have unfotunately over-run itheir target date) will cost a great deal of money ; estimated and expected totals of over seven billion $R are quoted.

However, the Brazilians expect that the development and improvement will be well worth the cost and will pay dividends for local and international investment institutions.