The opposition considers that Ancap’s board of directors approved changes in the bidding process that reduce the requirements of the contract.
The partnership with private companies for the business of Portland continues to generate controversy with the opposition, which highlights the possibility of it ending in privatization, for which reason it presented its intentions to suspend the tender due to changes carried out by the board of directors of ancap that, they consider, reduced the requirements of the contract.
The senator for the Broad Front, Jose Nunes, presented this Wednesday on its social networks the request by the opposition to suspend the bidding process of the portland and the lime. The request establishes that “the changes made to the specifications of the call significantly reduce the requirements, opening the possibility for companies with less availability of resources, and therefore with less financial solvency, can submit offers.
With this they emphasize that there is a great risk that what the State put into the hands of a private company an estate of hundreds of millions of dollars. On the other hand, they consider it inconvenient for the changes to be made less than 20 days from start of the opening of offers since it “puts firms at a disadvantage that, had they known about this facility in advance, could also have submitted their offer.” At the end of the statement, they request that the call for bids be suspended in order to review the modified conditions.
The government continues to defend the opening to private
In mid-August, the Minister of Industry, Energy and Mining, Omar Paganini, defended the opening to private portland business by noting that ancap It has “more than 20 years of systematic losses” due to its current operation. The hierarch ratified in the Parliament the importance of associating with private parties as the “only viable way out”.
Regarding the accumulated losses since 2000, ancap reported that they amount to more than 760 million dollars, accounting for 433 million in operating losses and 328 million for the loss of value of the investments made.
“For more than 20 years money has been lost. All sorts of things were tried and they didn’t work. He Uruguayan market It is not enough to develop the business in a viable way”, pointed out paganini at a press conference.
For the minister, “someone is needed to give us access to regional markets and it is not ancap who can do it.” In this sense, he argued: “When one enters these concentrated markets, with great players, it is not easy to do it as a newcomer than as a player who is already there, with a strong back.”
Source: Ambito
