Colombia's Magdalena river PPP still awaiting key approval

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has pledged to speed up approval of the new public-private partnership (PPP) project to maintain navigation conditions on the Magdalena river from the country's fiscal and economic policy council (Confis), according to Atlántico department governor Eduardo Verano.

Verano and Barranquilla mayor Alejandro Char met with Santos when the latter visited the department capital last week. "We expressed the importance of the Confis document to push this project forward. We reminded him [Santos] of this and he said that he would do his utmost," Veranos stated to local radio station Emisora Atlántico.

Last week, the 2.2tn-peso (US$785mn) project was not mentioned during the latest Confis meeting, despite an earlier claim from infrastructure deputy minister César Peñaloza that that the PPP would be discussed there, daily El Heraldo reported.

Now, the head of river regional autonomous corporation Cormagdalena, Alfredo de la Rosa, told the same daily that a new Confis meeting could address the PPP as early as Tuesday (June 12).

"Remember that there was a PPP contract that was terminated. Therefore those resources were released. Now we simply have to allocate those resources to the new project," he said.

The Confis approval would secure the resources needed for the project, which in turn would allow Cormagdalena to launch the tender for the contract directly afterwards.