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This was stated by the Minister of Public Works of Santa Fe, Lisandro Enrico, when presenting the plan for repairs of provincial roads. "Instead of holding many tenders, we held one so that all companies would have to compete," he said.
Lisandro Enrico, Minister of Public Works, this Friday presenting the plan for repairing provincial roads
The government of Santa Fe has launched a strategy to reduce the costs of public works related to the repair of provincial roads: fewer tenders to increase competition between construction companies.
This was stated by the Minister of Public Works, Lisandro Enrico, this morning in Rosario when he provided details of the repairs that the Government of Santa Fe will finance on roads in the province, especially in the south of the territory, within the framework of the works that will be carried out on more than 1,000 kilometers of provincial roads.
Specifically, the tender was carried out last week by the Provincial Government, through the Provincial Highway Department, with the aim of restoring the state of the road infrastructure in the departments of La Capital, Rosario, San Lorenzo, Iriondo, San Jerónimo and Las Colonias. It involves repairs to 58 sections of 38 routes, simultaneously and independently, given the size of the areas, which cover these six departments.
“The budget that the Province proposed for this work is 3,839,960 million, a price that arises from certain items such as well repairs, surface patching, recycling, and asphalt paving. Regarding the patching repairs that have been done so far, we compared our budget with the costs of the different bidding contracts in different departments carried out by the previous administration and we saw some contracts 80%, 90%, 76%, 21% more, that is to say that we lowered the cost of public works a lot,” explained the minister.
“What we have done here is to concentrate all these departments in a single contract, in a single tender so that there is more competition, so that companies do not distribute different tenders, but rather all directly present themselves to compete in a single tender. This is very important because it means a strong reduction, with an average of 70% in relation to the tender that was made in 2023, regarding the costs of the work,” he said.
Achieving a 70% cost reduction compared to 2023 in an inflationary economy cannot go unnoticed and exposes particularities regarding the preparation of budgets during Omar Perottis administration. It is true that the upward dynamics of inflation last year, together with the delays and delays of the Province in paying and updating contracts, led to bidders submitting higher budgets.
But Enricos statements also raise questions about the strategies of the construction companies, since it cannot be overlooked that the minister said that the companies "shared out" the contracts. The issue of cartelisation of the business is always a topic of discussion in the public works sector. |
