New bridge start date up in the air

SEVEN MONTHS after President Varela announced that work on Panama’s fourth bridge across the canal would begin no start is in sight and money budgeted for the $1 billion plus project is leaking into other are areas.

La Estrella reports that  the construction of the mega project promoted by the government of President Juan Carlos Varela, is no longer within the budget priorities, at least for the first half of the year.

Because of  the delay in the award of the contract , the Executive has decided to transfer to other departments, several million-dollar items of the general State budget for the 2018 fiscal period originally intended for the bridge.

President Varela said on October 4, 2017 that the order to proceed with the project would be delivered in January of this year and three months later construction would start, but, seven months after the proposal was delivered, nothing has started

Four companies presented proposals: the Panama Fourth Bridge Consortium (China Communications Construction Company LTD and China Harbor Engineering Company LTD); Dragados Sucursal Panamá, S.A. (Spain); Astaldi Consortium – Daelim, conformed by Astaldi S.P.A. (Italy) and Daelim Industrial Co., LTD (Korea); and the Cuatro PuenteConscec – Crec Consortium, formed by China State Construction Engineering Corporation. and China Railway Group Limited.

But after seven months  the evaluation committee is still reviewing the technical proposals of the companies, and , the $179 million budget  for staring the  new bridge could not be executed.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) has already requested the Budget Committee of the National Assembly to transfer $30 million to other projects including  roads  water, and sanitary.