Vinci’s investment in Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado (AHD) airport is 19% lower than what was forecast by the French multinational when ANA was privatized in 2012, according to a government resolution published in Diário da República on Thursday.
“Since the start of the concession, the concessionaire has more than doubled its business volume and almost quadrupled its EBITDA [lucro antes de juros, impostos, depreciação e amortização]. However, instead of following the evolution of demand and the profitability of the concession, the cumulative volume of investments is 18.9% lower than the volume forecast by VINCI in the field of privatization,” the resolution reads of the Council of Ministers adopted on December 7 and published today. requires ANA to make investments at Humberto Delgado Airport, with a view to easing restrictions on operational and passenger comfort.
The resolution states that “since the signing, on 14 December 2012, of the Concession Agreement for Airport Public Services at Airports in Mainland Portugal and the Autonomous Region of the Azores (Concession Agreement), and with the sole exception of the period of the pandemic, the increase in demand at AHD has been systematically much greater than expected, both in terms of the number of movements and the number of passengers.”
In 2019, the best tourism year before the Covid-19 pandemic, passenger numbers grew by 7.36% compared to the previous year, to 31.1 million passengers, “highlighting punctuality problems in an overloaded infrastructure”.
This year, traffic on that infrastructure is expected to exceed 2019 levels, with more than 32 million passengers.
“In addition, the investments made by the concessionaire in this airport infrastructure do not appear to be sufficient to guarantee the expected and desirable response, both in terms of service and performance level, given the evolution of demand,” the document reads.
At the press conference after the Council of Ministers on December 7, Deputy Secretary of State for Infrastructure Frederico Francisco explained that no obligations have now been added to the ANA, compared to the obligations set out in the concession contract, which already provided for two types of commitments: the the first related to explicit development obligations and the second related to the contract clause requiring ANA to make the necessary investments to respond to traffic growth.
The government’s resolution stipulates that ANA now has four months to submit projects to meet specific development obligations in Lisbon, with implementation deadlines running until 2027.
According to Frederico Francisco, failure to comply with these deadlines will trigger “normal mechanisms” such as fines or, as a last resort, the courts.
Source: DN
