Yesterday the deadline for the application of the exceptional price review mechanism set forth in Royal Decree-Law 3/2022 expired and which the Government approved to try to adjust the budgets in which public works were awarded to the new reality of prices in the sector , fired for more than a year. A system that, although it acknowledges that it needs improvement, the sector considers essential to avoid not only a wave of bankruptcy proceedings and dissolutions of construction companies but also to prevent many works from being deserted and thus putting NextGenerationEU funds at risk. They consider it so vital that the National Construction Confederation (CNC) has addressed a letter to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to mediate in the dispute between the ministries of Finance and Transport (Mitma) and make possible the extension of the mechanism, as reported yesterday by the CNC.
As the employers assure, in the Government there are two conflicting sensitivities regarding this matter. The Department of María Jesús Montero has a purely budgetary vision that has led her, for the moment, to not want to know anything about a possible temporary extension of the measure. Opposite is the Mitma, which considers it essential to provide stability to public procurement to comply with the commitments made with Brussels. From the CNC, as well as from the other large sectoral organization, Seopan; have been warning for some time in this regard that the completion of the mechanism may leave void upcoming tenders that are financed with European funds. The employer calculates that there works contracts amounting to 6,923 million euros pending awarding and formalization that do not incorporate the exceptional price mechanism as the term for its application has expired and that they run the risk of being void.
If the projects are not awarded and depend on EU funds, the problem is further aggravated. As sources from the sector explain, if there are works with European funding that remain deserted, “You go back eight months because you have to reapply the project, adjust prices… and deadlines are tight”they warn. The works dependent on the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan must be committed before the end of 2024 and executed in July 2026. And losing eight months would be a serious setback because “we are running tight on deadlines,” they warn. Seopan, in fact, has already warned that the delay and low execution of the Pertes and additional European aid (addendum) that total more than 106,000 million euros will make it necessary to extend the terms for the execution of the funds and has therefore asked the Government to extend the terms.
Quality
The sector, as the association of unlisted construction companies (Anci) has also shown, is also concerned about the effects it may have on the concurrence the lack of this mechanism. If, instead of receiving twenty offers, only two or three arrive because many construction companies do not want to risk getting involved in works that may be deficient for them, the quality of the project may suffer because “The one who takes risks does not always have to be the best. And that is not good for public funds”warn the sources consulted.
Deserted works are not a mere threat. They are a reality. Last year, the companies abandoned 2,032 public works tenders for a value of more than 900 million euros as the budgets of the public administrations did not adjust to the actual execution costs calculated by the companies. Recently, for example, the transfer of the Pizarroso Basin, in Cáceres, a 62-million-euro project tendered by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, has not been awarded.