Agency alleged lack of resources to Congress, but attested to functioning of system to block thousands of requests; more than 40 thousand new bus lines were no longer created in the country
Passengers from 2,494 Brazilian cities remain without new interstate bus routes 3 years after the country institute a regulatory project to promote the opening of the road transport market.
The central objective of ANTT (National Land Transport Agency) Resolution No. 6,033/2023 was to stimulate competition, reduce ticket prices and connect the interior of the country. To allow the entry of new operators, the government established a registration period known as the extraordinary window.
From 2023 to 2026, however, nothing has changed. The bureaucracy of the process kept the market closed, avoided competition and blocked the creation of 41,833 bus routes across the country. This scenario and its impacts were presented and debated at the FPE (Parliamentary Entrepreneurship Front) meeting on May 19, 2026.
Cross-referencing official documents, communiqués and ANTT databases exposes a scenario of contradictions, in which the justifications presented by the government for the delay differ from the operational capacity that the agency’s own systems demonstrated.
To understand the mechanics of locking and what the officials say, it is necessary to understand the chronological order of the facts.
2025 JUSTIFICATION
In 2025, given the slowness in approving new routes, the federal deputy (PL-SE) demanded formal explanations from the government through Information Request 5,507/2025. Here is (127 – kB).
The response was approved and sent to Congress by the Ministry of Transport, in Official Letter 2.273/2025/ASPAR/GM and its annexes. Even though the technical response was made by ANTT, the sending by the ministerial office brings institutional responsibility for the information passed on to the Legislative Branch to the department.
In the attached technical response (862 – kB), the government argued that the extraordinary window was suspended due to lack of resources. According to the text, budget cuts prevent the maintenance of the information systems necessary to evaluate companies’ requests.
“As is known, the significant budget cuts that affected regulatory agencies this year substantially affected ANTT’s procedural, financial, technological and human resources”says the attached technical document.
When contacted by the report, ANTT denied the existence of information request 5,507/2025. THE Poder360 also sent the agency some questions about the topic, which were not answered. If there is a response, this report will be updated.
In the document, when asked by Congress whether it had produced any technical study, legal opinion or AIR (Regulatory Impact Analysis) to support the blocking of market opening, ANTT denied having produced any such document. The response reveals that the agency paralyzed the sector without measuring the economic and social impacts of the measure, and was based only on the narrative of contingencies.
Other governance failures can also be observed in the process. The process included orders, formulations and considerations from the Road Concessions area of the Ministry of Transport, such as Order 97/2025/CGTRC and Official Letter 49/2025/CGTRC, an interference from a sector focused on asphalt and tolls providing assessments in an exclusive process for the interstate bus market.
The letter sent to Congress also presents a historical error and chronological inconsistencies. The text indicates that ANTT was created by a 2021 law, when the authority’s legal framework dates back twenty years earlier, in 2001.
Added to this is the confusing and contradictory procedure of the Ministry of Transport itself. Although ANTT’s technical area finalized its response to Congress in September 2025, through Official Letter 34,753, the ministerial office held the document and only sent it 2 months later, on November 19.
The delay resulted in the sending of an outdated information package, in which the government handed deputies a letter justifying that the system was not working due to lack of funds, accompanied by another document, written in November, which contradicted its own version and admitted that stages of the Extraordinary Window had already been resumed.
SYSTEM WORKS AGAIN
The budget justification that the agency did not have technological infrastructure lost support in April 2026. After a recomposition of funds carried out on April 23, formalized by Ordinance 134 of the Ministry of Planning and Budget that released blocked R$ 81.2 million, ANTT published, on April 24, 2026, the . Here is Ordinance 134 (341 – kB).
The document formalized the publication of the results of the Extraordinary Window. The speed caught attention. Systems that until then were considered inoperative by the government, with the justification of budget cuts, had the processing of thousands of requests disclosed from one day to the next. The full release of data in this short space of time shows that the evaluation of companies was already being carried out internally, which contradicts the argument of technological unfeasibility sent to congressmen.
THE IMPACT OF DATA
Even though the systems operated in April, analysis of the data generated reveals differences in the evaluation criteria applied to participating companies, with a direct impact on the country’s connectivity.
The internal database identified as “DC_Monopolists” demonstrated that 4,868 routes were validated using “direct contemplation”. Markets were guaranteed to companies that already operated the sections, and were kept free from the entry of new competitors on these specific routes. The consolidated balance indicates that, today, Brazil has 36,722 existing routes in the hands of these traditional companies.
In parallel to this, there was the registration ofthe elimination of 6,955 requests made by interested companies. The geographic crossing of this data reveals the size of the damage. The restriction prevented the opening of exactly 41,833 new routes, the so-called “window markets”and deprived 2,494 cities of new travel options and possible fare reductions.
Here are the full databases(596 – kB) e (245 – kB)
The main motivation for mass disposal did not come from structural problems within the companies, such as fleet failures, but from strictly bureaucratic pending issues, such as “fee payment not made”. The agency’s decision perpetuated a scenario of road exclusion in the most vulnerable regions of the country. Of the total municipalities affected, 669 cities do not have any legal interstate lines.
The combination of these scenarios indicates that the process was administratively flexible to guarantee the permanence of the consolidated lines, and acted as a highly rigid formal barrier to restrict the entry of competitors and limit the expansion of the road network.
CANCELLATION AND RECALCULATION
The progress of the regulatory process was reversed weeks after the results were released. On May 11, 2026, ANTT published the . The sole purpose of the act was to completely annul the list published the previous month.
The justification recorded by the agency was the “need for reprocessing due to systemic failures”. In public administration, the total cancellation of certified processing, justified by a computer failure, is not a common measure. Information Technology inconsistencies require specific algorithm corrections, not the discarding of the procedure.
By opting for complete annulment, ANTT returned the market to square one and established a framework of legal uncertainty. The revocation effectively suspended the deadline of May 25th, the deadline for companies originally qualified to request the issuance or adaptation of their TAR (Terms of Authorization). Instead of opening the market, the sector is now awaiting the agency’s promise to publish new results sheets only on June 15, 2026.
The agency’s back and forth has already provoked a reaction from control bodies. On Tuesday (June 2, 2026), the MPF (Federal Public Ministry) began demanding formal explanations from the municipality about the real justifications for the abrupt suspension of the market opening process and the competitive impacts of the measure.
BALANCE OF THE IMPASSE
The evidence extracted from official letters and databases indicates that the sector’s blockage is not limited to budgetary restrictions.
The Ministry of Transport approved and sent to the Legislature a package of letters confirming the absence of technical or impact studies to stop the market, with the process passing through a sector that does not respond to the issue, with the year of creation of ANTT itself wrong and supported by a contradictory chronology. At the same time, shortly after receiving a budget release of R$81 million, the agency rejected thousands of new requests due to formal pending issues.
