Brazil's Ecorodovias wins BR-153 highway auction

The consortium led by Brazil’s Ecorodovias has emerged as the winner of Thursday’s BR-153 highway auction, offering 320mn reais (US$60mn) for the 35-year contract.

The concession involves widening and operations and is expected to generate 8.46bn reais in investments. 

Ecorodovias outbid CCR while both players accepted the 16.75% maximum haircut in the toll booth prices in the first bidding round, so the decision came in round two when the highest premium was rewarded.

The 850km stretch between the cities of Anápolis and Aliança do Tocantins had to be auctioned for the second time, as the winner of a 2014 auction had the rights to operate revoked due to non-compliance with the contract.

The highway is key for grain transport from the center-west to port terminals in the north.

“The success of those auctions is due to setting the rules and the projects to meet the demand. The quality of the companies that took part in the auction gives us assurance that we won’t have any delays in the works,” infrastructure minister Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas said after the auction.

“We have calculated the risks very well, this allowed for very aggressive biddings from the companies, we are very happy with the rule set we had in place and we know that we will have very good highways, with reasonable toll prices that would allow for good yield on the investment while [prices] will not be too high for users.”

Marcelo Guidotti, a representative of the winning consortium, said after the auction that the model has reduced risks of problems previously seen, especially failure to comply with contracts.

“This new model is better calibrated compared to the previous one, and this is why we bid now and we are looking into new investment opportunities in this region of the country.”