The Government of Colombia is about to complete its mandate. In this journey many successes and challenges have been presented. In this way, in an interview with Ángela María Orozco, Minister of Transport, they talked about those challenges and achievements that he has culminated in his position in command of the infrastructure of Colombians.
How did they receive the country and road infrastructure?
We found a great initiative that was the fourth generation concession projects, after having passed the PPP law and we managed to create the National Infrastructure Agency (ANI) which was a great effort. However, of those 29 projects, 21 were totally paralyzed, six were going very well, two with problems, but 21 paralyzed, 18 had an execution of less than 10% and 10 of those, less than 1%.
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That implied that we had the budget totally committed, the future terms with those contracts was $49 billion, because that is the Capex of those projects and the stopped works.
We also found a completely underfunded Inviás with half the budget.
How did they work on it?
We sat down with all the actors to see what the 4G diagnosis was and we produced a document about it. That’s where we started working, not all of them were reactivated at the same time, there are some that were reactivated just a few months ago because the contract was barely transferred, but today we have 28 of the 29 projects reactivated with financial closure, the majority for $22 billion (between original financial closings and restructurings), a value that had not been achieved in history.
They complete a ten of 10 4G projects, what to say about it?
We have already delivered 10 fourth-generation projects, there are others that are going to be more than 95% complete, but with what happened with the excessive rains and in May of last year, those will be finished in December of this year. .
About the others?
There are 11 projects left that have other bigger challenges, which are the ones that were reactivated later (…) they will be completed in the 24 months after this government. That had never happened in this country, only in second, double lanes and third lanes in four years we did what had been done in the 30 years of road concessions.
How was the reactivation of Invías?
We had a great debate but Congress and the benches supported us to strengthen Invías and when the tax ceiling was lifted, it allowed us to carry out the largest public works contracting package that any government had carried out in a year, because at that time we managed to contract the ‘Conclude and conclude’ and ‘reactivation 2.0’ programs and here we are talking about $15 billion in 82 projects, 50 of the first package, 28 that sought to pave roads that had been in the making for thousands of years and that lacked 20 km or 30 km on the ground, which we did on the Traversal Momposina (…).
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With Invías we are rehabilitating more than 4,600 km of national and secondary roads under its responsibility, that is what had been done in the 8 years before this Government.
How was the progress in tertiary roads?
The Government in recent years did not spend more than $20,000 million on tertiary roads, and Invías in the last four years prior to this Government spent an average of $5,000 million a year. President Iván Duque recognized that the municipalities could not finance their tertiary roads, that is why we mobilized a package of $5.6 billion for more than 1,050 projects, with $3.7 billion of the national budget with that we improved 12,000 km of tertiary roads versus the 1,600 facts in the previous 10. (…).
That’s enough?
No, because they are more than 142,000 km, but it is a prioritization precedent.
The tender for the Magdalena River App was declared void. Has it advanced?
the rethink?
There is a great world uncertainty that was not foreseen (…) the war in Ukraine, the increase in oil prices, the uncertainty due to the electoral issue. It is an issue that depends on the dredgers and there are very few in the world, that is why, until a week before, we had two interested proponents with the structuring agents (…)
Now what we have decided is that we cannot abandon the river, and we are restructuring future contracts to carry out public works for those works that were included and buy the drugs and make an agreement with Findeter so that they can bring those contracts to present value and go into debt and buy two dredgers. to deal with dredging.
Meanwhile, we will guarantee the dredging resources for these two years while the machinery is purchased and the public works are carried out.
PAULA GALEANO BALAGUERA
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