Flipping Book | 110 years of future | Salini Impregilo Library

239 238 was completed in 1978 and all generators were operational by 1979. It was on the São Simão in 1977 that roller compacted concrete was first used in Brazilian dam construction. Rather than inherently flawed, import substitution industrializa- tion was the appropriate policy for the period but times changed faster than policies. Indeed, it could be argued that the development of the industrial sector under import substitution industri- alization made the dynamic private sector model possible in the 1990s. The international market also changed substantially, with expanding glo- balization. Four decades later Latin America was again a testing ground for the test bed for major policy experiments, this time in the opposite direction. In Chile, in particular, the military junta privatized most telecom and electricity companies between 1985 and 1989. Prior to privatization, new leg- islation opened all services to competition and established tariff regulations based on margin- al-cost pricing of simulated efficient enterprises for services that were provided under insufficiently competitive conditions. While privatized compa- nies substantially improved their efficiency, these gains were only partially passed on to consum- ers. A few years after the return of democracy in 1990, a new wave began. Between 1994 and 1998 the majority of state-owned transpor- tation companies were sold off and electricity privatization was completed, followed by water companies and private concessions for several construction projects in airports, highways and tunnels. A major privatized project in Santiago is the 30.4 km Costanera Norte urban highway that has increased privately funded mobility with- in the metropolitan region and eased escalating congestion problems. The concession involved the construction, maintenance, and management of a single, dual and triple-lane link, six new bridges, a 2.7 km open-type tunnel and a 4km Anchieta-Imigrantes Motorway System, Brazil, 1999 cut-and-cover tunnel. Another toll concession con- tract, this time in Argentina, was the 59.43 km road linking the towns of Rosario and Victoria and included a 608-m-long cable-stayed bridge structure. Last and definitely not least, it is a history of ine- qualities, in income, wealth and opportunities. It has been not only a history of disparities within individual countries, but also between different countries and even more importantly between Latin American countries and the world’s leading nations. The region pulled ahead of the rest — meaning the non-Western, poor parts of the glob- al economy — at an early stage, but has also repeatedly fallen behind. Since the early 2000s, a new generation of prag- matic leaders has shown a renewed commitment to focus on economic growth as the main driver of poverty reduction, with social policies targeting the most vulnerable groups. Poverty has been halved in less than 25 years. Economic concepts like conditional cash transfer programs, microfinance initiatives, or post-conflict processes have become part of the everyday language. Between 2008 and 2013 the number of developing countries of- fering at least some poor people cash with strings attached, such as a requirement to send their chil- dren to school, almost doubled, from 27 to 52. Brazil has been a pioneer in this. Invariably tout- ed as “the country of tomorrow,” only to fall in crisis soon afterwards. Since the mid-1990s it has managed to grow rapidly while letting the incomes of the poor grow faster than the rich. Key to the success has been the famous Bolsa Familia program, which offers cash transfer to poor families in exchange for enrolling children in school and ensuring vaccinations. Through Bolsa Família, which covers 14 million families, Brazil has cut abject poverty by 28% in a decade. These are results that would have been impossi- ble to achieve without complementary infrastruc- ture that has provided job opportunities: think of the Anchieta-Imigrantes motorway link between São Paolo and Santos, Brazil’s largest port. More than 34 million inhabitants, equivalent to 20% of the national population, live in this region, the industrial powerhouse of Latin America. A 11.35 km subsection of the motorway passes through a mountainous area with gradients of more than 6% in some cases and includes three tunnels and six viaducts for a total length of 2,663 m. After turning its back on globalization, Latin America is rediscovering it and once again ma- jor infrastructure projects are driving the process. None is a better example than the Panama Canal Expansion, the largest project since the first ship sailed through the isthmus linking the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean one hundred and one years ago. The project will create a new lane of traffic along the Canal with the construction of a new set of locks, doubling the waterway’s capacity. After the expansion a new generation of larger cargo ships, so-called Post-Panamax vessels, will be able to transit through the Canal, with up to 12,600 TEUs (compared to 5,000 TEUs at pres- ent). Works began on August 2009, to be com- pleted within 2016. According to the Washington Post , by 2030 Post-Panamax vessels could represent 62% of the total container ship capacity. This will bring an influx of new business — a recent report from C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. and The Boston Consulting Group estimates that up to 10% of container traffic to the U.S. from East Asia could shift from West Coast ports to East Coast ports by 2020 — is prompting America’s ports into deepening their harbors, increasing their bridge heights and transforming their infrastructure. In Panama City, there are over 3.2 million square feet of logistic warehouse space currently under construction. The idea is that those ships that are unloaded on the East Coast have to come back, and they don’t want to come back empty. This provides South America with a strong opportunity to ship agricultural goods and other products to Asia. For this to happen of course, Latin America has to reach a much higher stage of industrializa- tion. Remember that rapid development and man-