The government asks for the concessions of the north and west accesses to be canceled

The government wants cancel the motorway concessions at the North and West entrances. The National Road Administration, responsible for supervising these passages, will try to declare null and void two decrees of 2018, in which the concessions in place with Autopistas del Sol and Grupo Concesionario del Oeste, which manage them, have been ratified.

The executive power understands that the previous administration has validated an “alleged debt” of the national state of 540 million dollars with Autopistas del Sol and 272 million dollars with the Grupo Concesionario del Oeste.

He had started Abertis, the Spanish group which is the majority shareholder of both companies an ICSID statement, an international arbitration tribunal of the World Bank. The company was asking for compensation of up to $ 1.135 million at the time.

As part of the renegotiation of the previous management, Vialidad extended the concession from 2020 to 2030, the deadline for Autopistas del Sol to recover investments already made and not amortized. The company, in turn, has pledged to disburse $ 7.3 billion in new works.

“Of all the documentation that motivated the signing and subsequent approval of the Integral Contractual Renegotiation Agreements, there are no elements that give certainty about the existence of this presumed debt”, affirms the current Executive Power.

“An automatic six-monthly tariff update mechanism has been envisaged, plus an update each time the CER index exceeds 10%, and the prohibition envisaged in the original contracts on the fact that the same legal entity can be a shareholder of the concessionaire and of a ‘other company that owns the road concessions granted by the grantor ”, exercises Executive Power.

“In the decrees (of the Mauricio Macri administration) it was also established that all disputes should be submitted to arbitration according to the arbitration regulations of the International Chamber of Commerce, which means the renunciation of the jurisdictional sovereignty of the National State,” according to the Government.

Autopistas del Sol (Ausol) and Grupo Concesario del Oeste (GCO) they had challenged the general administrator of the National Road Administration, Gustavo Arrieta; the Minister of Public Works, Gabriel Katopodis, and the Prosecutor of the National Treasury, Carlos Zannini.

The aim was to favor the nullity of the acts of these officials during the verification in view of the possible initiation of a legal action to cancel the renegotiation of the motorway concession contracts signed in 2018.

The companies alleged the alleged bias incurred by the officials who lead and supervise the process.

In August 2021, both Ausol and Grupo Concesionario del Oeste requested the “nullity and inadmissibility” of the review process carried out by Obras Públicas.

The agreements are “fully legitimate” and have been approved by the national executive “at the end of a process in which all the control requirements envisaged by the applicable legislation have been complied with”, according to the intuition of the companies.

The northern access managed by Autopistas del Sol is 120 kilometers long, consisting of a section of General Paz Avenue, the Pan-American highway and the branches to Tigre and Pilar.

In the management of Javier Iguacel in Vialidad, with Guillermo Dietrich as Minister of Transport, Autopistas del Sol received the recognition of an investment of 728 million dollars in the concession that has not yet managed to recover. However, as part of the renegotiation, it will allow for a recovery of $ 499 million. “They have a deadline of 2030, but they could come sooner. Since the company is public, we will find out by monitoring the balances,” said Iguacel.

The Pan-American concession began in 1994. The National State violated the contract in 2002, with the pesification, leading hundreds of companies to initiate lawsuits in ICSID.

In 2006 Vialidad decided on a new scheme in the road concession contracts, which was applied with patches. “It was an incomplete renegotiation, which sought a partial and temporary solution, in view of a global renegotiation that would be carried out later, in 6 months, but never materialized”, criticizes Iguacel.

At the time, the concessionaire was defined to have an internal investment recovery rate (IRR) of 11.9% (previously it was 15.83%). But the agreed rate was not respected and Ausol continued to charge less than the original contract, according to the criteria used by the previous Vialidad administration.

Ausol intervened from the Kirchner administration and did not pay a negotiable obligation (ON). The company has had a long string of bad balance sheets due to the weight of liabilities it hasn’t been able to pay, the company said in its equity statements.

Vialidad has also signed an agreement with Autopistas del Oeste. Now, he agrees with Autopistas del Sol. Both have lowered ratings in the ICSID.