Private sector to get 25-year roads contract
The private sector will be given long-term contracts for the building and maintenance of roads which should lead to better quality roads, Transport Minister Austin Gatt told The Times Business. Dr Gatt was speaking in an interview after declaring last...
The private sector will be given long-term contracts for the building and maintenance of roads which should lead to better quality roads, Transport Minister Austin Gatt told The Times Business.
Dr Gatt was speaking in an interview after declaring last week that the government was considering handing over the responsibility for the quality of roads to the private sector.
The government has no intention of privatising the country's road network, Dr Gatt explained, but instead of issuing a tender every time a road needs to be built or repaired, the government will be issuing one tender for a long period of time, and managing that contract.
"All European countries have moved to a situation in which a public private partnership has been created for a particular area which means that a road, when it is built, and built well, will last for 25 years. A number of roads are grouped together, which create enough mass to provide work for a contractor for 25 years, and a tender is issued - very similar to what we do today for one road - for that whole area of roads to be built by the contractor but also maintained by the contractor, for 25 years," he said.
He said that today contractors couldn't specialise in building roads because they were not assured of enough work in this area. Dr Gatt said the €35 million spent annually on roads did not produce the quality one would expect from this amount of money.
"With the same amount of money we can get much more efficiency, much better quality, if we pool it all together and do it long term. If the government is going to enter into a 25-year contract with a professional company for €35 million a year, this company will use this guaranteed income to get a loan in order to invest in the machinery and manpower."
Dr Gatt said that he hoped that having created economies of scale and given a long term contract Maltese contractors will join together and also possibly get foreign contractors to pass on their know-how on large projects.
"There are too many sub-contractors, too many individuals to control, and there needs to be more responsibility as far as contracting is concerned," he said.
"I hope we will be able to attract foreign contractors who can input their experience into the system - they have much more experience than local contractors where large scale and long term projects are concerned. Once the work is long-term it will raise quality. We will be rid of all administrative work after the award of the tender, except to approve designs and check quality," he said.
He said the government was still on track for the liberalisation of public transport and in May or June it should be in a position to issue a tender for the bus service.
Dr Gatt said the government wanted to see a shift by commuters towards public transport and the way to achieve this was by offering liberalisation plus investment in public transport as well as by discouraging the use of cars in highly densely populated areas.
"We put in the CVA system in Valletta - but we have now reached the stage where everyone has got used to paying the fee and people are happy to enter Valletta and pay to park for eight hours there. So we have to have a look again at CVA because it has not achieved its aim," he said.
Dr Gatt did not rule out the possibility of CVA - which is a system that favours residents over commuters - being extended to other localities.
Dr Gatt was speaking in an interview after declaring last week that the government was considering handing over the responsibility for the quality of roads to the private sector.
The government has no intention of privatising the country's road network, Dr Gatt explained, but instead of issuing a tender every time a road needs to be built or repaired, the government will be issuing one tender for a long period of time, and managing that contract.
"All European countries have moved to a situation in which a public private partnership has been created for a particular area which means that a road, when it is built, and built well, will last for 25 years. A number of roads are grouped together, which create enough mass to provide work for a contractor for 25 years, and a tender is issued - very similar to what we do today for one road - for that whole area of roads to be built by the contractor but also maintained by the contractor, for 25 years," he said.
He said that today contractors couldn't specialise in building roads because they were not assured of enough work in this area. Dr Gatt said the €35 million spent annually on roads did not produce the quality one would expect from this amount of money.
"With the same amount of money we can get much more efficiency, much better quality, if we pool it all together and do it long term. If the government is going to enter into a 25-year contract with a professional company for €35 million a year, this company will use this guaranteed income to get a loan in order to invest in the machinery and manpower."
Dr Gatt said that he hoped that having created economies of scale and given a long term contract Maltese contractors will join together and also possibly get foreign contractors to pass on their know-how on large projects.
"There are too many sub-contractors, too many individuals to control, and there needs to be more responsibility as far as contracting is concerned," he said.
"I hope we will be able to attract foreign contractors who can input their experience into the system - they have much more experience than local contractors where large scale and long term projects are concerned. Once the work is long-term it will raise quality. We will be rid of all administrative work after the award of the tender, except to approve designs and check quality," he said.
He said the government was still on track for the liberalisation of public transport and in May or June it should be in a position to issue a tender for the bus service.
Dr Gatt said the government wanted to see a shift by commuters towards public transport and the way to achieve this was by offering liberalisation plus investment in public transport as well as by discouraging the use of cars in highly densely populated areas.
"We put in the CVA system in Valletta - but we have now reached the stage where everyone has got used to paying the fee and people are happy to enter Valletta and pay to park for eight hours there. So we have to have a look again at CVA because it has not achieved its aim," he said.
Dr Gatt did not rule out the possibility of CVA - which is a system that favours residents over commuters - being extended to other localities.