Maria Ines Agudelo Valencia, director general of the agency, says INCO has no road concessions ready for tender for at least the next two years. Agudelo was speaking at the Project Finance Colombian Energy & Infrastructure Finance Forum in Bogota on 24 February. The agency has at least three major road projects to launch – the 525km Bogota to Buenaventura, 568km Bogota to Cucuta and 600km Arterias del Llanos corridors – but none will be ready for procurement until at least 2013. The value of each concession has yet to be determined but total investment in the corridors is roughly Ps5.7 trillion ($3 billion). Other projects in the agency’s pipeline include two rail and up to 38 port concessions.

A Bogota-based sponsor says that the trickle of deals from the national agency is not on account of Colombia’s lack of need but rather the infancy of the agency and relative newness of the procurement model to the country. INCO was only formed in 2003, whereas Chile’s Ministry of Public Works, which awards the country’s concessions, has been procuring infra­structure projects from the private sector since the early 1990s.

Other public authorities are lining up to exploit investor appetite for the country. Colombia’s national transport ministry is preparing to procure $1.83 billion in railway concessions later this year. Included are the 1,075km, $1.16 billion Sistema Ferroviario Central and the 454km, $670 million Tren del Carare corridors. Ferroviario Central would connect the Port of Santa Marta on the Caribbean Sea to the centre of the country. Carare would connect the Cundinamarca coal basin to the Ferroviario Central corridor.

Bogota is preparing to launch a $2.6 billion, 169.5km network of toll roads later in 2011. The network would be split into 13 separate 30-year concessions and would stretch across the capital district. However, tenders are unlikely to begin until after local elections in October, according to the Andean Development Corporation, or CAF, which proposed the network to city officials in November 2010.

Finally, the National Planning Department (DNP), which also has a role in developing concessions, is pushing a private initiatives law that would allow developers to submit unsolicited project proposals. Jean Philippe Pening Gaviria, infrastructure dir­ec­tor at the department, says passing a new public-private partnership law that in­cludes a framework to incentivise such private initiatives is a priority this year for the current government. While details of the new law are not yet available, a similar policy in Chile gives bonus points to sponsors’ bids for projects that they develop.

The 464km third phase of the Ruta del Sol concession – won by the Impregilo-led Yuma Concessionaria in July 2010 – has yet to close long-term financing. The concession’s debt requirement is expected to be in the range of $1 to $1.2 billion. In addition, a number of sponsors are currently out to market for project debt.

Pacific Rubiales Energy is seeking rough­ly $100 million in financing for a 250km transmission line that would bring power to its Rubiales Field from the national grid. It is targeting a 12- to 15-year loan denominated in Colombian pesos for the $130 million project, with the re­mainder of costs being covered with sponsor equity. The developer hopes to close financing in the first quarter of 2012. The 230kV line will bring lower-cost and lower-emissions electricity to its operations and replace oil-fired capacity on site. Pacific Rubiales expected environmental approval for the project in March.

Further out, the sponsor is also looking for as much as $3.7 billion in project debt from international lenders and multilaterals for its 923km Oleoducto Bicentenario de Colombia pipeline, for which Rubiales and Ecopetrol, Colombia’s national oil company, are sponsors. Financing would be split roughly 70:30 between debt and equity. The line would be broken into three phases: from Araguaney to Banadia, Banadia to Estacion Ayacucho and Ayacucho to Covenas.

OPAIN plans to close a roughly $390 million bank loan for its Bogota Airport concession by June. International and local commercial lenders are expected to participate in the US dollar-denominated debt that is being arranged by the IDB, CAF and China Ex-Im. The 15-year fin­anc­ing will include a grace period during construction, which is scheduled to be complete in 2016. BNP Paribas and Bancolombia are financial advisers to the concessionaire.

The project company, which is a con­sortium of Odinsa, CSS, El Condor, Coindustrial, Marval and Zurich Airport, has fund­ed airport operations and initial con­struc­tion projects through a mixture of short-term bridge loans and equity contributions since it won the 20-year concession in 2007. The IDB approv­ed a $165 million loan to the concessionaire in December 2010. Allen & Overy and Prieto & Carrizosa are legal counsel to the concessionaire. Milbank and Cardenas & Cardenas are lenders’ counsel.

The $1.086 billion airport expansion pro­ject includes construction of a new 163,000 square-metre passenger terminal with more than 60 contact gates in phases over the existing terminal as well as new cargo and other airport facilities. Consultants include Arup (engineering), Simat Heller & Eichner (traffic), Golder Associates (environmental) and AON (insurance).

Despite INCO’s relative infancy, Col­om­bia is on its way to become another Latin American concessions powerhouse. All three sections of the Ruta del Sol, a 1,000km national highway stretching from Bogota to Santa Marta but also connecting with the country’s other major urban centres including Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, and Bucaramanga, attracted multiple bids from domestic and international investors. Future concessions are expected to attract similar levels of interest once tendered – all Colombia needs to do is to get the projects to market.