The General Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish) detected a road work that was carried out in the province of Corrientes, in a period of twelve consecutive months; it took 1387 days for paving.

This is paving and signaling a stretch of 34 kilometers from the provincial Route 40, which will promptly from the east access to the city of Mercedes join the National Route 123, up to Since Cyrus.

This work was addressed jointly by the National Highway (DVN) and its Corrientes equivalent, through an agreement signed in mid-2007, providing for the financing and control of the first, while the second would handle the call to tender and the execution of the work.

According to the Watchdog, the minutes of the start of the work of this project (after a bidding process and an award that took almost two years, in favor of the company Roads Litoral SA), dated June 29, 2009 at that, on schedule, should have been completed on July 30, 2010.

However, on April 16 and 17, 2013 the audit team visited the site and found that it was "unfinished." The report adds that at the time it had been "1387 days from the start" and had not yet "placed the asphalt.”

According to research, the project was in the same situation "since May 2012," a scenario that "prevents the completion of the work."

Section 2

The agreement reviewed by the Audit also includes other work that must be performed on a 41.2 kilometers from the provincial Route 40, but in this case from the Ciro Post to its junction with the Provincial Road 114 (road to the town of La Cruz and results in the National Route 14, on the side of the Uruguay River).

As in the previous section, this work has been delayed from the bidding process. It is that although the venture was awarded in March 2008 at the company Succession Adelmo Biancalari, the minutes of commencement of work is dated only in May 2011.

Similarly, although the second tranche had a prescribed period of 18 months straight, "the date of the visit by the auditors was not finished and took more than 23 months since the begging of the work."

More Delays

"One of the conditions set out in the agreements signed by the National Road Administration and the province of Corrientes was not met," says the report of the AGN, approved this year, referring to the deadlines for the payment of certificates of work set in 60 days, "delays of between 4 and 11 months were noted and these higher costs involved because it was necessary to readjust prices."

Time is Money

Continuing on the subject of prices, the AGN also notes that it was "not properly clarified the reasons why both bids didn’t follow the official budgets."

Those budgets had to be updated which also impacted the delays already described and even "certain readjustments of the work plans," says the report, and performing other works that "they were not foreseen in the original tender," and then were approved by the Corrientes Road.

In numbers, the Audit points out that Section 1 had an original budget in January 2007, of $ 61.5 million. At the time of the tender, that figure climbed to $ 76.7 million and, in fact, by October a third overall was reached with a "contractual amount" of $92.1 million; It is an increase of more than $ 30 million in ten months.
Until then, every kilometer of the work was worth $2.7 million. But in October 2010 (when the venture was to be finished), everything was doubled: the original budget climbed to $ 185.4 million, and the price per kilometer reached $ 5.4 million.

Section 2 is not far behind. In January 2007 the original item amounted to nearly $ 98 million; the solicitation numbers rose to $ 118.5 million and the "amount per contract", ten months later, reached $ 140.4 million.

Thus, the value per kilometer was of $3.4 million. But, as in the previous case and retrofits through, in October 2010 the total budget came to $276.8 million, and the thousand meters of work came to cost $6.7 million.

Workers

Moreover, the inspection body visited the bakeries and noted, in the technical office and laboratory Section 2, photography company Tec Vial SA, a different signature to carrying forward the work. On this, the AGN says "it could not confirm the authorization for such subcontracting" in the Corrientes’ road; a permit also is "required by the rules on public works (governing) in the province."

While in Section 1, the Watchdog "could not verify the existence of order books and services" and also noted "a lack of temporary road signs to prevent accidents, since the route is under construction, but it enabled transit.”