REFLECTIONS ON A NECESSARY APPROACH TO TENDER SPECIFICATIONS FOR A SUFFICIENT CONCURRENCE OF BIDDERS TO ENSURE THE PROJECT’S SUCCESS

摘要

The current world economic situation features two main characteristics that, if analysedtogether, may each be an appropriate solution to the requirements presented by the other.On the one hand, there is the need of certain governments to obtain financial resources forthe construction of roads, so as to generate and maintain economic growth. Nevertheless,most of these governments are unable to dedicate funds from their annual budgets to thispurpose, as today’s budgets are mainly directed to social expenditure and debt-servicingpayments.On the other hand, the financial situation has forced central banks in major countries topursue no-interest or even negative-interest policies. Therefore, some investors(investment funds and banks, pension funds ,…) find it more and more difficult to obtain areasonable return on their capital.In the case of roads, an opportunity arises if the two scenarios are combined. On the onehand, governments need infrastructures they cannot pay for but that can be paid for bytheir users. On the other hand, investors are looking for “reliable” projects to invest in orderto obtain the targeted returns.For this reason, it is important to establish certain rules, based on high quality studiesdemonstrating the need for infrastructure as well as the potential demand to allow itsfinancing. Therefore, the concession grantor and the concessionaire must not only sharethe risks efficiently, in such a way that each part assumes the risks that each can bettermanage, but also try to minimize those of the other part. Besides, both parties mustassume a distribution of profits, if higher than projected.Such is the case of the concession contract for the road between San José and Caldera,tendered in 1998, signed in 2001 and started in January, 2008. It can be said that theterms and conditions of this contract anticipated the current situation, given the time whenthey were outlined, as they combined the two aspects mentioned above. A guaranteedminimum income (GMI), joint participation above a certain amount of income and the use of the present value of income (PVI) are tools that must be applied in order to draft acontract that allows these two main goals to be met.