Seven line up for Olmos concession

Peru's Lambayeque department has pre-qualified five Brazilian, French, Spanish and Argentine companies for its Olmos irrigation and hydroelectric concession and plans to pre-qualify another two soon, Lambayeque president Yehude Simon told BNamericas. The companies that have pre-qualified for the 30-year concession so far are: France's Bouygues, Brazil's Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez, Spain's OHL and Argentina's Hidalgo and Hidalgo, Simon said. Lambayeque, in coordination with the state government and investment agency Proinversion, has decided to postpone until March 19 the deadline to receive technical and economic bids for the concession. The previous deadline was December 16. "The companies only recently found out the project is interesting because of the national government's commitment to provide US$77mn in financing," Simon said. The total investment in the project is about US$130mn. "Before that it was not a viable project so we lost a lot of time, but now the project is more organized," Simon said, adding the concession will definitely be awarded in March because the deadline cannot be postponed beyond that. Only one company, Odebrecht, was in a position to bid on the original deadline of December 16, but "this is a country where everyone suspects everyone else, so to do things more openly and avoid any conflict we have decided on the postponement so there will be more competition," Simon said. The Olmos project will provide the infrastructure to take water from the Peruvian section of the Amazon River basin to irrigate land along the Pacific coast (on the other side of the Andes watershed) and generate power. Work will include deepening the Limon dam to 45m and the Trasandino tunnel to 15km.