ANTT changes HST notice to bid to define the technology

ANTT (National Agency for Land Transportation) will change the bullet train notice to bid, so as to enable the selection of the company that will receive the technology from the winner consortium in mutual agreement between government and entrepreneurs. “This is already decided. We made a technical meeting and will proceed with this change. The change considers the fact that the company selection will not more be made at exclusive discretion of the government,” stated Bernardo Figueiredo, General Director at ANTT, in interview to Agência Estado.

The High-Speed Train (HST), bullet train, will connect the cities of São Paulo, Campinas and Rio de Janeiro. According to Figueiredo, this change in the notice to bid has not been published in the Federal Official Gazette (Diário Oficial da União) yet because ANTT is waiting for the review of the changes in other items, similarly as for the tracing flexibility.

In São Paulo, the proposal being reviewed is the removal from the final text of the notice to bid of the mention about the Campo de Marte area, in the north zone of the city, as the location of the future station in the capital of the state. The city administration defends the idea of locating such station in the district of Barra Funda, west zone of the city, as it has a project to renew that site.

This and other changes, such as the flexibility of the percentage of national content in the enterprise, will be included in the agenda of a meeting with ANTT next week, when the conclusions from the workgroup in charge of these questions will be presented. The group is comprised, among others, by representatives from the Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade. After this meeting, the changes will be published in the Federal Official Gazette.

Bernardo Figueiredo considers reasonable that the changes occur until 30 days before the proposal delivery date, i.e. June 11. But according to him, the law permits that such kind of change (which does not imply in changes in the project model) occurs until 15 days before the proposal delivery date.

No changes. But the General Director at ANTT already anticipated that the government will not accept any proposal that changes the project model and economical bases. “There is no argument, for example, to change the maximum fare,” he stated. In the last few weeks, the companies interested in the bidding process began to defend the idea that the maximum fare be defined during the auctions by free bids. The notice to bid establishes that the maximum value to be charged from the passengers in the economical class is R$ 0.49 per kilometer, which limits the fare between Rio and São Paulo, for example, to near R$ 200.00.