Some Features of the Country Road Plans.

After the Constitutional Court eliminated a rule that only authorized the National Government to decide on exploration and exploitation projects in mining, hydrocarbons and roads, it became necessary to regulate the pronouncement of the communities, organizations that also according to the Court should be consulted, on projects that have an environmental impact.

The projects that regulate prior consultations and the reform of the infrastructure law are currently in socialization. Both allow to update and organize the investments in the development of projects and initiatives in various regions in the mining, energy, electricity, oil and infrastructure sectors, including some important of the 4G routes.

These reforms have been proposed for consideration by the Congress of the Republic and in the case of prior consultations, several aspects such as the following are highlighted. As mentioned in the specialized economic journals and newspapers of the country, the creation of the Prior Consultation Unit (UCP) is considered as an internal unit of the Ministry of the Interior with administrative and financial autonomy, without legal personality. This means that no agency is created for the issue of environmental licenses (ANLA) or ANI (national infrastructure agency) but it is an administrative unit with own resources, financed by fees that will be paid by those who are interested in the projects (consultations today can cost the State about 13.000 million pesos per year) that will assume the operating costs derived from the procedures of the mentioned consultations.

For this, rates were designed for the certifications and for the realization of the previous consultations, which will be focused on covering the personnel and logistics costs, within an independent fund of the general budget of the ministry of the interior (Special Fund for the Previous Consultation). The deadline for prior consultation may not exceed 6 months after the first meeting is held in the pre-consultation stage and in exceptional cases, the Unit may extend the deadline for the development of the process for up to 3 months, when the communities Consulted and / or interested parties request it.

This is very important to the agility of both infrastructure and mining projects.

Also created is the National Registry of Ethnic Groups (Rune), an information platform systematized with state of the art technology, to compile and centralize the information that different state entities have about communities and ethnicities. This in order to avoid what has been recorded in the past, when an infrastructure project or mining activity is announced and a people appears claiming rights, when there was no evidence that any community existed. In addition, certification includes the involvement of communities in carrying out their traditional social, cultural, religious, or economic activities and determining whether such peoples are likely to suffer direct and specific damage as a result of the project.

It was necessary to regulate the prior consultations in a law, so that the communities make better informed decisions and the entrepreneurs have greater legal certainty and do not jeopardize projects of interest for the development of the country. It is a question of reconciling the interests of the population communities and the businessmen so that they work together in the generation of jobs and the business activity is friendly with the environment.

For the private association of infrastructure companies, the current priorities are to achieve more financial closure of fourth generation infrastructure projects (4G), to boost the tertiary roads program, to overcome the Odebrecht case (which corresponds to the past in the program called Route of Sol) and rebuild the civil works via public work carried out by the Invías.

As for the 4G highways, 31 projects have already been awarded, 21 of them are already under construction and 8 have definitive financial closures for about $ 13 billion, equivalent to about 30% of the funding expected for the entire program.

In the case of Odebrecht, it is urgent that the liquidation of the contract is completed, which will be in two weeks, where it is contemplated that all payments are guaranteed to the agents of good faith affected and consequently assure them of the intention to finance new projects. Likewise, banking entities continue to analyze for the future the feasibility of including clauses of default and responsibility of the parties in the contracts signed with the concessionaires. The road project stopped by the Odebrecht problem would restart but on the part of the Invías as a public work.

Also canceling the contract in trouble, the banks will be able to recalculate its financing percentage in other 4G projects for the near future, bearing in mind that the banks contribution in this 4G program amounts to $ 2.7 billion, almost 30% of the current value of the roads with financial closure, which is considered by some guilds as close to the top to which the national private banks can approach, for an efficient management of their total loan portfolio.

The financial and banking guild proposes additional financing channels, which are also being studied by the Colombian Stock Exchange, among which are the reprocessing of bank capital through securitization schemes and increased financing through the capital market (Debt funds).

Within the latter are the real estate funds created so that large investments were also accessible to small investors, such as hotel projects, commercials and business, concept that would be adapted to the infrastructure sector to finance ways works. It is also proposed to deepen so called “mini-perms”, which are short term loans with payments concentrated in about 6 to 7 years, seeking early refinancing, via the capital market, in collaboration with the Colombian Stock Exchange.

On the other hand, it was regulated, in order to make it easier for foreign banks to finance road works without assuming exchange risk, a line of funding in pesos so that these banks (which do not have a presence in the national territory) through the National Development Finance (FDN) can finance works.

As for the road projects called "tertiary roads", it is according to official information sources, to recover more than 140.000 kilometers of roads, within 20 years and cost $ 48 billion. It begins with a group of about 6.000 kilometers of these roads, for which there is an approved budget of $ 1.3 billion (that was of the benefits "regalias") and will be done by the public works system that runs the Invías. All projects must have studies and designs to avoid repeating what the 2.500 plan, when tertiary routes were intervened without previous analysis, which did not work. In addition, the system of the "type sheet" will be used for this program and must be strictly adhered to, which will allow to increase the concurrence of bidders in the processes, in addition to their transparency.

The Invías must supervise and audit each corridor and the maintenance must be in charge of the territorial entities, which would have to have an annual destination of resources for the effect.

During the period of 20 years, it will be necessary to count on the implementation of the total of the program of the tertiary roads, with Public Private Partnership ( APP) schemes similar to those of the 4G and with the participation of national and foreign banks, Development Finance National ( FDN) and capital markets.

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Today, in terms of world markets, Europe's stock markets are up as well as the US's pre-opening futures, due to higher than expected corporate and economic results.

The price of oil is at 48.2 dollars a barrel before the market opening, with a slight decrease -0.2% compared to yesterday.

In Colombia, the peso against the dollar recorded today a TRM of 2.987 similar to that of the previous day.