Tough time for tolls

Spain’s tough economic conditions have resulted in difficult times for the country’s private toll highway operators. A fall in revenue has combined with a tough financial situation to make it difficult to pay off debts. Spain’s Ministry of Public Works is offering potential help with a new viability plan for tolled highways. This would involve merging weak, loss-making highways with long concession contracts, with highways that are profitable. Several options meet this criteria but the sector considers the
July 3, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
Spain’s tough economic conditions have resulted in difficult times for the country’s private toll highway operators.

A fall in revenue has combined with a tough financial situation to make it difficult to pay off debts.

Spain’s Ministry of Public Works is offering potential help with a new viability plan for tolled highways. This would involve merging weak, loss-making highways with long concession contracts, with highways that are profitable.

Several options meet this criteria but the sector considers the merger of 5729 Abertis' operator Iberpistas with some of the radial highways in capital Madrid. Other highways that could benefit from such plans include the Airport road network in Madrid; the Madrid-Toledo corridor and the Cartagena-Vera road.

917 ACS, 5729 Abertis, 980 OHL, and 3959 Sacyr are some of the shareholders of these loss-making projects. However, all the plans to save the highways that were put forward by the Ministry of Public Works have been refused by the Ministry of Economy, which wants to avoid a bail out of the sector and is not keen to reintroduce the former system with highways run by the state-owned Empresa Nacional de Autopistas (ENA).

For more information on companies in this article

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