Last year, total toll receipts from drivers using the Algarve’s Via do Infante motorway contributed 66% of the total sum paid to the concession holder.
Motorists using the formerly free road, were relieved of €35.7 million in 2016, according to the annual report of the Technical Unit for the Monitoring of Projects.
The State had to make up the agreed sum of €54.2 million so the general taxpayer shelled out a further €18.5 million to the Dutch/Spanish owned concession holder.
This is one of the highest coverage rates in the country as revenues from all public-private partnerships motorways in Portugal covered only 22% of the costs, such is the insanity of this funding method.
For 2017 on the Via do Infante, the first quarter report shows costs were €19.78 million (€300,000 down on last year), with revenues of €5.75 million (down €372,000) giving 29% coverage from tolls received.
In total for 2016, the State had net charges from the country's public-private partnerships of €1.2 billion as the total cost was €1.5 billion and revenues were only €340 million.
Last summer, Spain’s Ferrovial sold part of its concession in the Via do Infante to the Dutch company, DIF.
Ferrovial reached an agreement, through its toll road subsidiary Cintra, with the Dutch fund manager to sell a stake in the Via do Infante toll road.
As a result, Ferrovial retained a 48% stake in the Via do Infante with DIF owning 49%.
The Via do Infante concession is scheduled to run until 2030.
The government went back on its pledge to lift the Via do Infante tolls when obtaining power and refuses still to commission a cost:benefit analysis or even discuss the concession contract as key parts of it are secret and to discuss them would break the contract.
The public, one way or another, is locked into paying for this public-private partnership until 2030, whatever the cost and however wasteful the original deal has proved to be.
Over 70% of the cost of the Via do Infante was covered by European Union funds to help develop the Algarve region's infrastructure.
In this, it succeeded but the imposition of tolls by the previous Passos Coelho government, left many of the region's motorists apoplectic as the EN125 road can not be categorised as a true 'alternative route' and has suffered from on-off road works since 2009 with the first, western, section still not completed and the eastern section not yet started.
Comments
How the government was allowed by the Court of Auditors to sign an agreement that not even MPs are allowed to look at, is baffling.
What is clear is that both major political parties have had a hand in creating this scam; if they had the will, they could break the contract. To me it seems unconstitutional that a government can enter a commercial contract like this (i.e. not to do with national security), while promising to keep the terms secret from the tax-payer.