The director representing the Broad Front (FA) in the director of OSE, Edgardo Ortuño, assured the Political Table of the opposition group that the government of Luis Lacalle Pou would be analyzing leaning towards a contract that would privatize the construction and operation of a plant water treatment plant
According to Ortuño, OSE received on Friday a definitive feasibility report on the construction of a new plant in Arazati, in San José department. This would collect water from the Río de la Plata in order to supply the liquid to part of Montevideo and the metropolitan area.
The report analyzed the proposals of construction companies such as Saceem, Berkes, Ciemsa and Fast, and OSE must study whether the privatization of water production would impact the rates paid by consumers, as published on Tuesday. The Daily.
Ortuño told the FA that privatization would force them to pay “US$12 million a year more than the cost that public management would have” in this mega project called Neptune. If OSE “buys water instead of producing it,” the population “will see it reflected in a rate increase,” added the hierarch.
Private water?
For his part, the president of OSE, Raúl Montero, told the aforementioned newspaper that at the beginning of the project the estimate was US$200 million, but that now that value has skyrocketed to US$280 million because “things have been added” and some of them still “need to be discussed (to) see how they are addressed”.
The president said that they are analyzing the idea of a BOT-type contract, which stands for ‘build, operate, transfer’, which translates as ‘build, operate and transfer’. Given this scenario, OSE will pay for the water that the concession company makes drinkable, although this “is not fully defined.”
