Chile looking to overhaul maritime concessions to boost desal efforts

The reform of Chile's maritime concessions is a big part of Chile’s desalination strategy, although it remains to be seen which agency will take over control of the process of granting these permits from the armed forces department.

Under the current system it takes an average of 45 months to obtain approval for a maritime concession, as opposed to the 12 it takes for concessions on land, national assets minister Marcela Sandoval, whose office handles the latter procedure, said during a public hearing of the senate water resources committee. 

“Maritime concessions are part of what are considered high-complexity procedures, thus requiring several studies and reports. Sometimes that makes [review] times much longer,” she said, adding that the planned reform will seek to streamline these processes by standardizing them with her ministry’s system for land concessions.

These amendments are part of the changes that the executive branch is expected to introduce next month to a bill related to the maritime concessions system that was originally submitted in 2012 by the government of then-president Sebastián Piñera.

That bill was approved by the lower house of congress in 2013, but it has been stuck in the senate’s environment committee since then.

The bill, as it was passed by the chamber of deputies at the time, can be seen here, in Spanish.

BOTTLENECK

Maritime concessions have been often cited as a bottleneck for desalination investments, along with other review procedures that the government is trying to speed up, such as environmental evaluations. 

A separate legislative effort to regulate desalination and to establish a national strategy in this segment is currently under review by the senate’s water resources committee.

That bill states that maritime concessions will be handled by an unidentified “competent” ministry, although any concession request must first have a favorable report from the public works ministry’s (MOP) water office (DGA) before being approved.

It also establishes that the national desalination strategy must be reviewed every four years and that the defense, public works, finance, economy, environment and interior ministries will take part in drafting and approving it.

During the senate hearing, the former head of state water services concessionaire Econssa, Juan Carlos Latorre, questioned the time frame outlined for reviewing the desalination strategy, suggesting that it should be six to eight years in order to ensure that it is not intrinsically linked to the country's presidential terms.

He also questioned the absence of the agriculture ministry from the group responsible for drafting the strategy and called for specific plans to be drawn up for each region.