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Highway corridor between Bahia and Pernambuco reinforces an ongoing economic change in the Northeast, with a billion-dollar concession, duplications, user services, and direct connection with productive fronts gaining weight in logistics, renewable energy, agriculture, and regional migration.
The concession of the Rota dos Sertões, a highway corridor between Salgueiro (PE) and the ring road of Feira de Santana (BA), was auctioned on May 28, 2026, at B3 in São Paulo, and will be under the responsibility of the Consórcio 116 Sertões for 30 years.
Expected to reach 502 kilometers of BRs 116 and 324, the project totals R$ 8.5 billion over the contract, according to ANTT data, and becomes part of a logistics modernization agenda between Bahia and Pernambuco.
The winning group offered a discount of 19.60% on the basic toll rate, a criterion used in the auction conducted by the National Land Transport Agency, structured in partnership with the Ministry of Transport and BNDES.
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With operation, maintenance, and modernization included in the contract, the concession will cover one of the main transport axes of the northeastern interior, used by cargo, passengers, and regional production chains.
Rota dos Sertões targets logistical bottlenecks in the interior of the Northeast
Throughout the granted section, the planned interventions cover 16 municipalities and include 108 kilometers of duplication, side roads, new return devices, intelligent monitoring systems, ten user service bases, and a rest point for professional drivers.
Among the works mentioned by ANTT, the bypass of Serrinha, in Bahia, also appears, a measure that seeks to improve circulation in a strategic area for regional traffic and access to urban services.
The modernization is expected to reach a corridor used in cargo transport, regional supply, and the connection between urban centers, industrial hubs, and consumer markets in the Northeast, especially in areas dependent on the road network.
Treated by ANTT as the main road junction of the North and Northeast, Feira de Santana concentrates industrial, commercial, and logistical activities directly linked to BR-116/324, which increases the economic weight of the project.
Although it has its own relevance, the work connects to a broader movement of regional economic reorganization, in which infrastructure, agricultural production, renewable energy, and logistics play an increasingly integrated role.
Data from the Regional Accounts of the IBGE shows that, between 2002 and 2023, the GDP of the Northeast grew by 63.4% in accumulated volume, a performance superior to the 50.1% increase recorded by the Southeast in the same period.
Even with this growth, regional inequality remains significant, as the IBGE reported that, in 2023, the nine Federation units with a GDP per capita above the national average were concentrated in the Southeast, South, and Central-West.
Infrastructure accompanies new productive fronts
The logistical reinforcement occurs in a region that also gains attention for new productive fronts, such as agriculture, irrigated fruit farming, and renewable energy, sectors that depend on efficient transportation to enhance competitiveness and access to markets.
In the railway case, studies related to the Transnordestina analyze costs and possible routes for a branch between Petrolina and the Salgueiro junction, focusing on the outflow of production from the São Francisco Valley.
According to the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development, the proposal for the branch aims to strengthen irrigated fruit farming and other local productive arrangements, as well as facilitate access to the ports of Suape, in Pernambuco, and Pecém, in Ceará.
Within the same agenda, alternatives for integration between waterway, railway, and northeastern logistics network are evaluated to reduce historical bottlenecks and expand the connection between productive areas of the semi-arid and export routes.
In energy, the Northeast has consolidated a relevant role in the expansion of renewable sources, especially wind and solar, a movement that reinforces the importance of infrastructure associated with transmission, industry, and equipment circulation.
Linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Energy Research Company is responsible for studies that support sector planning, including electricity, oil, gas, biofuels, and renewable sources.
This set of works and projects does not eliminate the national economic concentration, but helps to explain why the debate on infrastructure in the Northeast has ceased to be just a road connection agenda.
The issue involves competitiveness, reduction of transportation costs, access to ports, and integration between productive areas of the semi-arid, points that directly influence the regional capacity to attract investments and retain economic activities.
Economic change has historical roots
The current search for integration contrasts with a long trajectory of displacement of the Brazilian economic axis, initiated even in the colonial period, when Pernambuco and Bahia were among the centers of the sugar economy of Portuguese America.
With mining in Minas Gerais and the transfer of the capital to Rio de Janeiro in 1763, the Central-South began to gain political and economic centrality, a movement that would deepen in the following centuries.
In the 19th century, coffee cultivation expanded this change by strengthening Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo as export hubs, capable of accumulating capital, attracting railway infrastructure, expanding financial services, and forming a consumer market.
From this process, São Paulo gathered some of the conditions that would sustain its industrialization in the 20th century, while the Northeast became associated with debates about productive delay, drought, and regional inequality.
The interpretation of the Northeast as a national problem gained strength in public debate from the formulations of Celso Furtado in the Working Group for the Development of the Northeast, known by the acronym GTDN.
According to an Ipea study, the discussion ceased to be limited to droughts and began to involve underdevelopment, productive structure, land concentration, and regional inequalities, central elements for understanding Brazilian economic formation.
Migration shows smaller population loss in the Northeast
Also shaped by economic concentration, migratory flows led millions of Northeasterners to seek work and better living conditions in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais over several decades.
The 2022 Census showed that 19.2 million people lived outside the region where they were born, of which 10.4 million were natives of the Northeast; of this total, 6.8 million resided in the Southeast.
In the most recent data, however, a relevant inflection appears: between 2017 and 2022, the Southeast received 859 thousand immigrants from other regions and lost 980 thousand residents to other areas of the country.
With this movement, the region recorded a negative balance of 121 thousand people, the first regional loss since 1991 in this Census methodology, while other areas began to retain or attract part of these displacements.
In the Northeast, the population loss still existed but shrank significantly in the interval analyzed by IBGE, indicating that the migratory dynamics no longer reproduce with the same intensity the pattern observed in previous decades.
The region received about 746 thousand people and lost approximately 995 thousand in the five years before the 2022 Census, a negative balance of 249 thousand, much smaller than the loss of over 700 thousand recorded in the 2010 Census.
In this scenario, the Rota dos Sertões represents a piece of infrastructure within a slower and unequal transformation, marked by productive advances, persistence of disparities, and an attempt to strengthen regional corridors.
Without reversing the Brazilian economic concentration alone, the concession reinforces a logistical network that can increase the Northeast’s capacity to retain investments, cargo, jobs, and population in areas historically dependent on connections with the Southeast.
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