Santo Domingo Puerto Plata Highway

Cancelled

In November 2009, Dovicom began rehabilitation and construction of the 240km Santo Domingo Puerto Plata Highway. The project involved building, rehabilitation and maintenance of all the roads linking capital Santo Domingo to Puerto Plata province, under a 30-year concession contract. Works included constructing the 24km Circunvalacion Norte Highway between Santo Domingo and provincial capital Santiago, and building two new lanes and a new tunnel on the Navarrete-Puerto Plata highway stretch. The project also entailed reconstruction and rehabilitation work on the following stretches: Santo Domingo-Navarrete stretch of the Duarte highway, the Sanchez highway between Santo Domingo and San Cristobal, and the 6 de Noviembre highway. The Santo Domingo Puerto Plata Highway was part of the government's VIADOM program, whose goal was the rehabilitation and operation of approximately 1,000km of roads connecting the country's three principal regions through the use of private operators. The project was awarded to Dovicom on June 8, 2009 in an international competitive tender by the Secretariat of Public Works under the rules governing the VIADOM program. The VIADOM program stated that concessionaires were chosen based on their experience in the sector, financial capacity, experience funding infrastructure projects and other factors. The number of final bids was not known although 21 companies submitted expressions of interest. The shareholders of Dovicom were IECSA [Argentina], [Ghella, Italy], and Autopistas Dominicanas (Autodom) [Colombia-Dominican Republic]. Autodom was 60% controlled by Odinsa SA and an unknown Dominican shareholder. The total project cost was estimated at US $450 million. Financing had not been arranged as of December 31, 2009. Dovicom was expected to recover its cost through tolls. In May 2013, the government decided to cancel the concession contract. The toll rates required to pay back the company's investment costs were too high, and the private sponsors did not accept the subsidy offered by the government to keep the rates low.