The Brazilian Government announced yesterday (7 April) that there would be a three-month postponement of the auction that would authorize the tender for the construction of the bullet train between the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the first of its kind in Latin America.
The auction that shall choose the consortium responsible for the project, which has an expected cost of R$ 33.1 billion and has attracted the interest of companies from South Korea, France, Spain, Japan and Germany, has now been scheduled for 29 July.
The new postponement was confirmed by the General Director of the National Land Transport Agency (Agência Nacional de Transportes Terrestres - ANTT), Bernardo Figueiredo, and was expected in the light of the pressure from several interested companies, who asked for more time in order to negotiate the composition of the consortiums.
This is the second time the tender has been postponed, as it was initially scheduled for 16 December of last year. It had been postponed to 29 April of this year after only one consortium, led by a South Korean company, admitted to having the documents ready.
“This is a postponement with the same rules that exist at present. We have been asked to give the groups more time to clinch the commercial agreements”, Mr. Figueiredo announced.
“When we had the first postponement last November, the situation was different. The companies confessed that they waited for the political decision (elections) to get ready, as the costs required heavy investments”, Mr. Figueiredo added.
This new postponement casts a shadow of doubt on whether the high-speed train between the two most important state capitals of the country shall be ready before the 2016 Summer Olympic Games to be held in Rio de Janeiro.
The original project was that it would start operation before the 2014 FIFA World Cup™, which has both São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro as host venues. The delivery of the proposals by the interested parties, which had been scheduled for next Monday, has now been postponed to 11 July.
Mr. Figueiredo has made it clear that, in spite of the postponement, the work is still expected to get under way in the second half of 2012. “We shall try to recover this postponement period in the licensing process. We shall make every effort, once the winner has been decided, so that this work may be constructed as quickly as possible”, he added.
The President of the regulatory agency has admitted that the interested parties include Brazilian construction firms Camargo Correa, Odebrecht, Queiroz Galvão, OAS and Andrade Gutierrez, and that each one is negotiating the establishment of a consortium with foreign-based companies that have the technology.
The new postponement was announced two days after the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approving a Bill of Law which authorizes the National Bank of Economic and Social Development (BNDES) to provide financing to the victorious consortium for a value of up to R$ 20 billion, which is equal to 60% of the cost of this construction work.
Following the rules of the tender, the high-speed train shall have a total route length of 500 kilometers and shall connect, in the beginning, stations located at the international airports of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, with a branch line reaching out to the city of Campinas.
The expectation is that this train shall transport 33 million people in its first year of operation and up to 100 million people by 2033, when the concession ends.
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04/05 | News
