HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION AND MANAGEMENT NEW CONCESSIONS (Advisory opinion)
PRESS RELEASE
The Italian Competition Authority submitted an opinion to the Minister of Public Works and the President of the National Organization for Motorways (hereinafter ANAS) dealing with two aspects: first, the automatic process of issuing a new concession for the construction and management of highway routes in favor of Autostrade; second, the ANAS' intention to behave in the same way with the other motorway concessionaires.
The Authority usually advocates that new concessions would be issued through public bids for tenders, in that the automatic renewal does not allow to receive benefit from the periodical competition for granting concessions.
Add to that, the Authority said that whether the new concession would concern a part of the highway network which, for its characteristics, can be divided into a number of routes, the management of these routes could be granted to different operators, in order to promote comparative competition mechanisms.
The Authority felt that the above considerations should be taken into account with respect to both the twenty year extension of the concession granted to Autostrade, in light of its privatization, and the extensions that ANAS would intend to issue to other concessionaires. Therefore the Authority found that granting a new twenty year concession to Autostrade according to Ministerial Decree no. 314/97 was incompatible with Law no. 287/90. With respect to the expiry of the concessions granted to other motorway operators, it was suggested that the management of single routes would be given through public tenders. This solution seems to be in line with the need expressed by ANAS to compensate debts to concessionaires. In fact bids for tenders could be arranged whose initial asking price would be based on the amount of the credit of concessionaires and whose length would be as the same as the one provided by ANAS in case of extension of the concession.