The Spanish Ministry for Development is currently implementing an infrastructure and transport policy with which it intends to promote an intermodal approach to the transport system itself. To this end, it has carried outa substantial planning effort drawing up the Strategic Infrastructure andTransport Plan, which naturally includes the road system infrastructure that has been subjected to environmental assessment and to social concertation with the other road agencies. The Plan analyses the need to create andmaintain infrastructure and the management and financing possibilities for the investment required. This Plan is applied to roads through a Sectoral Plan. In this context, the Public Overland Transport Infrastructure Company was created to facilitate the financing of road and rail infrastructure in order to be able to maintain a strong pace of investment without affecting the budgetary balance. New concessionary systems have also been set up to adapt, upgrade and maintain the so-called first-generation expressways, spanning a period of 20 years, by means of shadow tolls in which the concessionaire takes on the construction, availability and demand risk, thereby complying with EUROSTAT requisites concerning national accountabilityso that these contracts have no negative effect on public deficit. The Strategic Infrastructure and Transport Plan specifies that public budget funding will continue to be the largest source of finance for transport infrastructure, amounting to some 60% of investment for the Plan's 2005-2020 horizon, and it envisages increasing private-sector partnership through the use of Public/Private Collaboration formulas. To this end, partnership collaboration between the public and private sectors will be encouraged in order to optimise project viability through this management scheme in accordance with European Union recommendations. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Abstract