The notice to bid of the high speed rail, expected to be released on Thursday by the National Land Transport Agency (ANTT – Agência Nacional de Transportes Terrestres), will bring important changes in relation to the original text. One of the rules included in the text concerns compensation that the consortium operating the bullet train may receive if the schedule of infrastructure works of the project are not ready by the deadline given in the contract.
The notice to bid envisages the hiring of the consortium that will be responsible for the operation and technology of the high-speed rail, which will connect Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Campinas, in a route of 511 km. The Federal Government will be responsible for drilling and building more than 100 km of tunnels, bridges and viaducts, in a second bid to be held in 2014. If the government fails in its schedule, the operator consortium is entitled to financial recovery. The consortium also cannot be liable for any delays with environmental licensing and expropriation procedures, the latter a major obstacle for the project.
The notice to bid will also bring news about the requirements of movement frequency of trains, according to Valor. ANTT kept the obligation to have minimum operation of three trains per hour – and per way – on the express trip between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, during the peak hours in the morning (6am to 9am) and evening (5pm to 8pm). However, the demands during peak hours planned for the complete trip between Campinas and Rio de Janeiro were made more flexible, falling from two to only one train consist per hour. The other short-distance regional travels (São Paulo/Aparecida, for example), which had the requirement to offer six trains per hour, will have the requirement defined at the discretion of the concessionaire. It will be up to the consortium to stipulate which flow of trains is more suitable for these stretches.
Companies interested in the project even asked the government to broaden its participation in the project for up to 49%, the same rate that Infraero adopted in the airport concessions. However, the Federal Government determined that the state-owned company Empresa de Planejamento e Logística (EPL), under the Ministry of Transport, will have one-third stake in the bullet train consortium. That means that the state-owned company will be responsible for 33% of disbursements to be made by the consortium, whether in the surety deposit, stipulated at $36.08 million, or in the public funding from the Brazilian Development Bank (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social – BNDES), which will lend up to 70% of the amount invested or $2.58 billion, whichever is less.
ANTT also decided that the Federal Government is entitled to ownership of 9% of the total net current revenue that is generated by extraordinary income from the high-speed rail. Companies interested in the project asked to ANTT, during the stage of public consultation, if they could participate, alongside the agency, in the development of the contract economic and financial balance recovery model. The agency has established, however, that the function will be exclusive to it, according to the public interests involved in the case.
The formula that will choose the winner of the bullet train involves two criteria. On one hand, the government will choose the company that is willing to pay more to run its trains on the rails granted. The minimum amount proposed by ANTT is $31.80 per each kilometer used. The second criterion will be based on the most competitive proposal for construction of the entire project, i.e., the company submitting the lowest proposal to deliver the project will have the edge over the others. The combination of these two factors will result in the winning proposal.
The auction is scheduled to take place in August next year, as the notice to bid will provide for a minimum period of eight months between the release of the notice to bid and implementation of competition.
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