Tender for Oiã-Soure stretch of Porto-Lisbon high-speed rail link has only one interested company

A competitive tender to build the Oiã-Soure stretch of the high-speed rail links between Porto and Lisbon has only one company consortium interested in doing the job – Mota-Engil.

This is because the base-price of the competition (€1.66Bn) is “doable but too tight” according to the CEO of construction company Mota-Engil which is the only company in the running, and indeed the only company prepared to do it at that price.

In an interview with the business daily Negócios published today, Carlos Mota admitted that generally when it came to big ticket large scale public works projects, the Spanish tended to get the lion’s share of the meat while the Portuguese had to be content with picking the bones.”

“I would say that the base price stipulated for the first stretch isn’t insufficient, but it is tight and that’s why there apparently isn’t any competition. I can’t understand the logic behind this strategy of Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) of having such tight base prices, but that’s what we’ve got,” he said.

However, the Mota-Engil CEO said that if they win the contract there are plenty of companies interested in forming a consortium to undertake the works. So far Mota-Engil has created a consortium of six companies called LusoLav which Mota-Engil is leading and will compete for four tracts of land.

A seventh concession partner is Lineas, a Mota-Engil company, and which also has the infrastructure fund partner Serena.

“The consortium is formed but if we win this or other contracts there will be many interested parties that will want to join us. Obviously, the closer to the closing date, the less the risk because it is backed by the State. There is a lot of capital seeking an Internal Rate of Return (IRR).