The contractual bonds were signed by the former president Mauricio Macri and his ministers Guillermo Dietrich (Transportation) and Javier Iguacel (Energy) in 2018, and fixed the dollarization of the rates of the tolls.
Fernández, who headed the presentation together with the Minister of Public Works, Gabriel Katopodis, affirmed that this agreement “was absolutely distorting, generating enormous economic damage to the State and fundamentally to the users.”
“It is a harmful action,” explained the president, since the Executive “verified that the 2018 contracts were disadvantageous for the State and the users, and caused an enormous injury to the State.”
According to an official report, the agreements that were signed with the concessionaires Autopistas Del Sol SA (AUSOL) and Grupo Concesionario del Oeste (GCO) represent a consequence of almost US$2 billion for state coffers.
At once, generated a debt of US$813,143,839.52, of which US$40,522,269.52 is required by AUSOL and US$72,621,570 by GCO, the Government reported.
“Of all the documentation that motivated the signing and subsequent approval of the Comprehensive Contractual Renegotiation Agreements, no elements emerge that provide certainty regarding the existence of that alleged debt,” justified the Executive.
With the current instrumentation of Fernández, Vialidad will file a lawsuit before the Justice to declare these macrismo decrees null and void.
The minister, for his part, remarked that the signing “established a debt in favor of the companies” that “have no justification or element that might be accredited.”
Likewise, the previous government granted the two companies “dollarization” of the contract during the renegotiation of the concessions, when “there is no component that justifies that they should be dollarized.”
“An adjustment of 8% per year is determined, which allows the two companies to have an extraordinary profitability”, added the minister and insisted: “They were being granted a privilege with a return in dollars updated at 8% per year.”
“The debt was going to be paid over ten years with which the contract was going to be extended, which was established until 2020 and arbitrarily extended until 2030, and in that period the payment of the debt was going to be privileged and postponing the works, the improvements and everything that has to do with the central objective of a concession contract,” he said.