The multi-million debt that the concessionaires of roadways 1, 3, 4, and 5 have with the body responsible for the road concessions and its control (OCCOVI, for its acronym in Spanish) is made up with their outstanding number of fines. In April 2010 the debt had climbed to $74 million. This debt is five times the 2009 budget for The National Chagas prevention campaign. This disease affects 1.6 million people and causes about 1,200 annual deaths in Argentina.

How are the funds executed? The money acquired through toll booths is administered through the Integrated Single Checkbox System (SICU, for its acronym in Spanish). "The money collected by all the companies is deposited every 48 hours to an account." Every 15 days, "firms must inform OCCOVI the traffic count and the amount of revenue.” With this data, the State Agency calculates and redistributes the money that each company gets, according to the information announced. The rest of the proceeds are kept by the Agency for, among other things, completing road safety construction jobs.

The Auditor General's Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish) warned about these irregularities three times. The first time the Audit said that the multi-million debts could have been paid by retaining the concessionaires’ monthly proceeds. Later on, the Audit stated in its report that "there is no procedure to verify the accuracy of the information provided by the dealers," this means that “the OCCOVI does not check the veracity of the data, they just accept them to be true” and distributes the earnings according to what the data tells them they should pay. As a matter a fact, when the AGN asked the Agency if they could show them the documents that check the veracity of the information provided by the concessionaires, they admitted that “such documents don’t exist”.  

Lastly, the Agency should have conducted regular checks at the toll booths in order "to verify (among other things) that the dealers are charging an appropriate rate, that the operation of fiscal controls are in order and that the traffic statistics are up to date". However, "between 2004 and 2009 only 46 audits were performed in six roadways". The federal watchdog stated that "in 2006 no highways were visited and in 2005 there was only one visit and it was in roadway two".

Budget and Construction

The AGN detected that between 2005 and 2010 the OCCOVI underspent their budget 45.85%, which means they didn’t use more than $30 million available to them for construction jobs. Furthermore, the auditors stated that "there were jobs that were not executed". For example, the paving of the shoulder of National Route 7 in Cordoba where no one showed up to bid, nor did anyone show up for the construction of drains at the National Road 12 in San Roque. In the latter, it took so long to get an approval that the project just didn’t make sense because the drainage conditions had changed.

Who’s Who

Below you will find a detailed listing of the highways and its concessionaires.

  • Roadway 1: Coarco SA – Equimac SACIFEI (UTE), Legal Name: Rutas al Sur SA
  • Roadway 2: Homaq SA, Legal Name: Autovía Oeste SA
  • Roadway 3: Decabial SAICAC – Vialco SA (UTE), Legal Name: Vial 3 SA
  • Roadway 4: Corporación América SA- Helport SA – Podesta Construcciones SA (UTE), Legal name: Caminos América SA
  • Roadway 5: Covico Concesionario Vial SA – Coprisa SA-Estructuras SACICIF – Glikstein y Cía. SACIAM – ICF SA – Noroeste COnsutrcciones SA (UTE), Legal Name: Vial Cinco SA
  • Roadway 6: Supercemento SAIC – Dragados y Obras Portuarias SA (UTE), Legal Name: Encivual SA