TC 1.2 FINANCING

摘要

At the beginning of the 21st century, all countries needed an efficient transport system with roads forming a core element to sustain quality of life, economic competitiveness and environmentally sustainable development. The demand for road travel was increasing in all countries, fostered by increasing road user demands, hence increasing the supply challenges to road authorities everywhere.The downing of the economic crisis that began during 2008, and still is going on in many places meant a new scenario where was even more difficult to cope with that necessity of investment.So good governance of road systems becomes vital, specially taking into account affordability and value for money.Even though very much has been written about increasing private financing of road infrastructure and services in many countries, the impact of the global financial crisis has meant a change in what is considered as adequate funding, thus creating an impact in maintaining existing roads and delaying building new infrastructure.All countries without exception around the world are facing more difficult challenges to secure adequate road funding, leading to more complex road funding strategies.Usually, the funds obtained from these user payments can be larger than the funding allocated to road construction, maintenance and operations and are increasingly becoming just another general purpose taxation due that more and more of those funds collected from these payments stopped being dedicated to the road system.As appropriate levels of funding became harder to obtain, the role of the private sector in the delivery of road services increased enormously. Consequently there was a trend in many countries to implement tolling of the road system as a way to rise funding. However, the crisis has affected both the money available and the number of users willing to pay; so many projects have been left in the portfolio, waiting for better timesAs a result Road authorities have also increased the range of contractual arrangements to engage the private sector in the delivery of road maintenance and operations services. With the increase in the complexity of the contractual arrangements, the number and variety of procurement methods to engage the private sector has also increased.So this report analyse the new funding and financing strategies specially focusing in new contractual arrangements trying to find out how the crisis has foster those changes.