Skip to main content

Four Colombia highway concessions to go ahead

Colombia plans to award the construction of four more highways by November as part of a US$25 billion plan to expand and improve road quality and logistics, President Juan Manuel Santos said. Once the contracts are signed, the government will have wrapped up the concessions to build nine highways, the first leg of its 4G plan to build 8,000km of roads. Most of the projects will be carried out under public-private partnerships. "We have four more [highways] to award ... Those projects will be awarded b
September 18, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
Colombia plans to award the construction of four more highways by November as part of a US$25 billion plan to expand and improve road quality and logistics, President Juan Manuel Santos said.

Once the contracts are signed, the government will have wrapped up the concessions to build nine highways, the first leg of its 4G plan to build 8,000km of roads. Most of the projects will be carried out under public-private partnerships.

"We have four more [highways] to award ... Those projects will be awarded between now and November," Santos said after signing the contract for a US$1.3 billion river navigability project. "We'll finish this year as promised, with the first wave of concessions awarded."

Last week, Colombia signed five highway contracts, the first under the 4G plan.

The government has eased rules to allow more companies to participate in the tenders, which have attracted few bidders. Insurer AIG said several highways could be difficult to award as traffic estimates for 20-25 projects - out of a total of 40 - were overstated, and anticipated possible financial strains in tenders.

Additionally, the government is looking at banks, multilateral organisations, bonds and infrastructure funds to finance the program.

Related Content

  • How can US transportation be ‘re-envisioned’?
    October 17, 2019
    In her address to this year’s ITS America Annual Meeting, congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, chair of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, called for a ‘re-envisioning’ of transportation. Her speech is below – and ITS International asks a number of US experts what they would like to see ‘re-envisioned’…

    I would like to welcome  ITS America to the nation’s capital.

  • Modernising India's bus travel
    August 29, 2012
    Award-winning ITS initiatives are promising modernisation of bus travel as a key part of development plans for cities of the Indian state of Karnataka. The Indian state of Karnataka is poised to launch the next stage of a major rollout of ITS technology on its bus network following the August 2012 go-live of an award-winning passenger information system. The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), which is owned by the state government
  • Australian road pricing, road funding needs more debate
    January 31, 2012
    Everyone in the road transport industry in Australia is talking road pricing - everyone, that is, except the politicians. Christine Keyes reports. At the end of 2008, Australia's road transport industry was wringing its collective hands, unable to raise more than $100 million from an individual bank for any Public Private Partnership (PPP). The A$750 million Peninsula Link project, announced by the Victoria Government in March 2009, was the first road project in the country to be put out to market as an ava
  • Dutch strike public/private balance to introduce C-ITS services
    November 15, 2017
    Connected-ITS applications are due to appear on a nation-wide scale this summer, through the Netherlands’ Talking Traffic Partnership – if all goes to plan. Jon Masters reports. The Netherlands’ Talking Traffic Partnership (TTP) looks almost too good to be true: an artificial market set up and supported by national, regional and local government to accelerate deployment of Connected ITS (C-ITS) applications. If it does have any serious flaws, these are going to become apparent quite soon, because the first