15 June 2006

The new Agreement for Motorways

Today there was the second meeting between Autostrade {company managing the Motorways} and ANAS {Azienda Nazionale Autonoma delle Strade Statali = company managing the State roads} with the intention of checking up on an agreement. I do hope it’s possible to find an agreement. If it were to happen that Autostrade does not accept a renegotiation of the Convention, or something of the same value, this would be going against what is correct in the institutional context and they would have to accept responsibility for this.

The rewriting of the Convention has even been suggested by the independent committee established by ANAS. It will certainly take time and given its importance it’s certainly right that all the different aspects can be evaluated without having time constraints.

If the merger were to happen before 30 June without a new Convention being approved by the Minister, this would be an “at risk” operation and I believe that Abertis and Autostrade must take this into account.

During yesterday’s hearing in the Lower House I stated certain points relating to Autostrade and they are summarised here:
- construction companies cannot be part of the collection of companies making up the resulting company for evident conflict of interests according to the ministerial decree 16/5/1997;
- investment policies resulting from the merger must not be penalising in relation to the investment obligations set out in the Convention;
- Autostrade’s cash of about 2,000,000,000 Euro must be speedily used on motorway work. It is currently managed by the company as pure finance. (The Authority has discovered that Autostrade has put into action only 2,100,000,000 of the projected 4,100,000,000 investment programme.);
- there is a need to re-examine the motorway percentages that can be charged to the concessionaire and on receipts from advertising and sub-concessions;
- inclusion of adequate and proportionate sanctions, that are today deficient, if Autostrade does not fulfil its obligations.
Anyway a study is now underway to find an efficient system of controls so that it will be possible to effectively and speedily manage the relationships with concessionaires.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Economy