Ayrton Senna - Carvalho Pinto Highway

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Ecopistas, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ecorodovias, was awarded the project to expand, rehabilitate and operate the 134.9 km long toll road in May 2009 and took over the operation of the highway in June 2009, when the 30-year concession contract was signed. When the concession was granted, the traffic on the highway was estimated to be around 20 million vehicles annually. The toll road is a stretch of the Campinas – Vale do Paraiba Litoral Norte Export corridor, located in the state of Sao Paulo and it is largely used to transport the production of 2.000 industries located in the Vale do Paraiba. Among these industries are the largest car manufacturing companies of the country. The bidding process for the second stage of the Sao Paulo state toll road concession program took place between October 2008 and early 2009 and the five awarded projects comprised the operation of 1715 km of highways in total. Altogether, the concessionaires committed to the duplication of 359 km, 526 km of additional tracks and new shoulders, besides the construction or expansion of access roadways, 317 bridges and viaducts and over 65 new pedestrians crossing bridges. The works were expected to benefit 171 municipalities with a total of 21 million inhabitants. The concessionaires also committed to maintaining 900 km of local toll free roadways. In May 2009, the Ayrton Senna – Carvalho Pinho Highway was awarded to Ecopistas by the state of Sao Paulo in a competitive bidding process based on the lowest toll rate criteria. The winning bid was 45.42% below the ceiling set by the state regulatory agency Artesp. The other bidder was Triunfo Participacoes e Investimentos, which actually made a lower offer (55% below the ceiling), but failed to make the 20% down payment of the concession rights. The private sponsors committed to pay US$ 297 million (BRL 594 million) to the government for the concession rights (20% of this value was paid when the contract was signed and the rest was agreed to be paid in 18 monthly installments) and were expected to invest US$ 229.5 million (BRL 459 million) during the first five years of the concession period. The total investment for the 30-year period amounted to US$ 429.5 million (BRL 859 million). In September 2009, the company (Ecorodovias or Ecopistas?), with the intermediation of the bank Itau, issued bonds to help finance the payment of the concession fee to the government, raising a total of US$ 75 million (BRL 150 million). As of November 2009, EcoRodovias had as main shareholders Grupo CR Almeida’s subsidiary Primav Construções e Comércio (Brazil, 65%) and the Italian company Impregilo (35%). Ecorodovias began charging tolls in February 2010. In February 2011, the state-owned bank BNDES granted a US$ 217.8 million (BRL 355.4 million) loan to the company to finance the infrastructure works. Source of information: sponsors and project company websites, Itau Bank, and news outlets.

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