Waterway: After disqualifying three companies, the AGP cancelled the tender to dredge the waterway and will make a new compulsa

After disqualifying three of the four participating companies from the so-called “short tender” for the dredging of the Paraná-Paraguay Waterway, the General Administration of Ports (AGP), the entity responsible for the maintenance of the inland waterway, decided to cancel the waterway and to hold another call for proposals involving new bidders. It will be done within 20 days.

The cancellation of this tender was made effective by resolution 38 of the AGP, following a formal appeal by the consortium composed of the Danish company Rodhe Nielsen and the local Emepa, one of the groups it challenged.

Emepa is a company owned by Gabriel Romero, a repentant businessman in the cause of the Notebooks who confessed to paying bribes.

The others contested were the company of the Chinese regime CCCC Shanghai Dredging (SDC), which was filed in a transitional union with Dredging International and the local Servimagnus and the Dutch Boskalis International with its local subsidiary. Compañía Sudamericana de Dragados (Jan de Nul, former operator) had continued as the sole bidder, who has now been temporarily extended the dredging works to guarantee the navigability of the water system called “Cuenca del Plata”, the same one where 80% of the volume of Argentine foreign trade is moved.

“From the analysis of interventions in the technical areas, it emerges that the submissions and challenges are based on divergent interpretations around the scope of the specifications and conditions,” indicates the text of the resolution of the AGP. In this regard, he points out that “as a single proposal remains in a position to be pre-qualified, the degree of real and effective participation has been limited, thus frustrating the possibility of knowing a greater number of economic offers”.

He adds that “it is considered appropriate and appropriate to repeal this appeal and to convene a new selective tender procedure for the same purpose, after adjusting the bases and conditions that will govern the compulsa, seeking a shortening of the deadlines”.

With regard to the new tender, the AGP stated in the resolution that “it is appropriate to weigh the experience of the proponents in the execution of dredging works in areas of similar characteristics”.

In short, arguing issues of greater competitiveness, the AGP reversed and called for a new tender in which, surely, the companies already mentioned will also be part of. They could present changes: last February, they were left out of the bid both for technical reasons of their specifications, and for issues economic.

Sources in the sector drew attention to one point: recently, the AGP extended a temporary marking contract to Emepa itself, which had remained in that specification as the sole bidder. Unlike what happened with dredging, in that case they did not see “the degree of real and effective participation limited, thus frustrating the possibility of knowing a greater number of economic offers”.

The AGP manages the river channel, while the Waterway Control and Management Agency, created last August, organizes the so-called “long tender”, for the future and long-term management of the waterway and will award the contract for dredging, marking, hydrometric control and toll collection of the road through which 80% of the volume of Argentine foreign trade.

However, it remains to be defined who will maintain the canal for the term of 180 renewable calendar days and with an estimated official budget of USD 80 million.

Currently, the administration and maintenance of the waterway is coordinated by the General Administration of Ports, but when the transition period is completed, it passes into the hands of the National Waterway Control and Management Authority, and this will advance with the tender documents for the new concession.

The Entity, run by Ariel Sujarchuk, is made up of Buenos Aires, Chaco, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Formosa, Misiones and Santa Fe, is based in Rosario, and represents the sector's largest equitable share in the waterway in the last 26 years. In addition, the ministries of Transport, Interior, Productive Development, Foreign Affairs, Agriculture, Environment, Security and Public Works interfere with the decisions that fall within the competence of the administration of the inland waterway.

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