Our blog today is sponsored by:
LAPTOPSCR.COM in Costa Rica
THE BEST PLACE TO BUY TECHNOLOGY IN COSTA RICA.
Inter-American Highway North to have 4 lanes.
The Inter-American Highway North in Costa Rica will be expanded to four lanes, with funds from a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for infrastructure, pending ratification in Congress.
The loan, amounting to a total of $850 million, foresees an initial disbursement of $300 million to improve four stages in the stretch from Esparza to Penas Blancas.
Work will begin next year in the 60 miles that separate Canas and Liberia. In addition to the four lanes, there will be bays for buses, pedestrian bridges and bike paths.
“It is a very important urban zone which needs to be resolved because there are many pedestrians and bicycles passing through. In addition, there are no problems with expropriations (from Cañas to Liberia). We already have the designs,” said Karla Gonzalez, head of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MOPT by its initials in Spanish).
The other stages are Barranca-Arizona (Abangares); Arizona-Cañas and Liberia-Penas Blancas.
Under the plan, the money will be delivered in seven disbursements for projects in the national road, cantonal and transportation network.
The execution by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MOPT) and the municipalities, in some cases, will begin after the approval of the portfolios of Finance, Planning and the Central Bank.
The IDB loan agreement has been in the hands of Costa Rican legislators since November and they need to ratify it.
The first disbursement of $ 300 million will also go toward completing the route from San Ramón to La Abundancia in San Carlos, Alajuela
Another $ 50 million will be spent on road safety, specifically, the bicycle lanes in seven areas of the country. Among these areas are Esparza, the entrance to Limon, Guácimo, Pococí, Liberia-Daniel Oduber Airport and a part of the highway ring circling San Jose.
“Hitting a stone.” This credit is the largest the country has negotiated in its history. It was obtained under the instrument called Conditional Credit Line for Investment Projects (CLIP) through which a “mass of resources” is moved but issued in parts.
The money will be paid back during a 25-year term, with a five year grace period. “We have to find the biggest stone to hit ourselves on the chest for having achieved this loan,” considered the finance minister of Costa Rica, Guillermo Zuniga.
The amount of the loan does not intimidate the hierarch because he states that the country will not have to pay commissions on the credit as a whole. Rather, commissions will be paid as the money is disbursed. The commission is 0.25% per year and may reach 0.75%.
That agreement was signed in late October and the legislators have a year to vote on it.
However, according to the Minister of Transport, the institution needs for the project to be ratified within a maximum period of five months. On the contrary, the advanced bidding processes for the expansion of the Inter-American Highway North will have to be “aborted.”
In Congress, the heads of the opposing factions said they shared the view that this credit is urgent, but promised to exert a lot of control over it.
“We are going to have a magnifying glass from here to the border. This is a loan that will under a lot of scrutiny and it is very difficult to support it a priori because it is a quarter of what the country has borrowed during its existence,” said Luis Hernandez, chairman of the libertarian fraction.
In September, the Central Government's external debt was $2.039 billion. According to the plan, this loan was requested due to the backwardness of Costa Rica’s infrastructure and the inadequacy of the tax on fuel to generate resources.
To TicosLand.com, this seems like a very good proposal, but as some of the legislators say, we must maintain permanent control, so that the companies that work on the project to do not provide poor work quality and then leave the country happily with money that all Costa Ricans must continue to pay back for many years. It is clear that the project will solve a perennial problem in one of the most heavily used and major roadways, but it should be done well so that it can last as long as possible.
To read more about Costa Rica, visit our internal blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment