São Paulo Rodoanel Norte will be auctioned in March and should have at least two bids

The new auction of the Rodoanel Norte (North Ring Road), scheduled for March 14, intends to finally give a solution to the project, which the government of São Paulo has been trying to make viable for more than ten years.

About a month before the bidding, two groups are firm in the dispute, according to the state secretary for Investment Partnership, Rafael Benini.

“We have confirmed two participants, and we hope there will be a third competitor,” he told Valor. He also affirms that they are new players in the sector.

According to market sources, XP is one of the groups that studied the asset and other companies such as Acciona and Pátria.

CCR also stated, in the last few days, that it is analyzing the Rodoanel but emphasized that the company’s focus in 2023 will be the delivery of ongoing contracts and, therefore, will be selective in the bids.

Ecorodovias, a strong candidate to take the project in 2022, confirmed to the report that it would be out of the auction. XP, Acciona, and Pátria did not want to comment.

The Rodoanel PPP, which lasts 31 years, foresees investments of around R$3 billion, of which R$2 billion will be used to conclude the work.

Of the 44 km of the stretch, about 25% remains to be built.

In the competition, the group offering the most significant discount on the annual payments to be made by the state will win.

The maximum value, fixed in the public notice, is R$51 million per year.

If a 100% discount is offered on this amount, the discount on the public contribution, which the government plans to allocate to the completion of the work, of a maximum of R$1.43 billion, will apply.

The PPP is a legacy of the previous administration, which structured the call for bids.

In 2022, there was an attempt at a bidding process, but it was canceled because it attracted little interest.

Later, changes were made in the public notice, with the readjustment of the public disbursements and the insertion of central risk mitigation mechanisms, which increased the attractiveness.

Benini evaluates that, after the adjustments, the market’s concerns were significantly alleviated.

For the market, the main fear is the uncertainty about the actual state of the works already carried out – stalled for years.

To reduce this risk, the reformulation of the public notice included the possibility of a review of the projects and investments in case the conditions found by the private partner were worse than expected.

In the view of Ana Cândida Carvalho, partner at BMA Lawyers, the arrangement brought more security.

“It is the first time I have seen a mechanism in this format, which brings a pre-work analysis. The solution reduces risk by facilitating economic-financial rebalancing,” she says.

Luciana Maciel, a partner at Bichara Lawyers, also believes that the tool helps to provide predictability to a risk that is difficult to measure.

Despite the government’s optimism concerning the auction, some analysts do not foresee fierce competition precisely because of the project’s complexity.

“We live in a high-interest rate environment, and it is an asset with high uncertainty. So there are doubts about how much companies are willing to buy the risk,” says Marcos Ganut, partner at Alvarez e Marsal.

He also considers that the number of projects planned for the next few years is large concerning the number of players in the highway market.

The Rodoanel Norte is the last remaining section of the ring road that bypasses the city of São Paulo, whose construction began in 1998.

The other sections are already under concession.

With information from Valor Econômico