This Friday, the Civic Front association condemned the “festival of hypocrisy” during the parliamentary debate on the abolition of tolls at the former SCUT, believing that it overshadowed the more pressing fundamental issue of the ruinous rents paid to private concessionaires.
On Thursday, Parliament generally approved the PS bill to abolish tolls on the former SCUT, with votes in favor of the Socialists, Chega, BE, PCP, Livre and PAN. When voting on this project, the SDP and SDS-PP voted against, and the IL abstained.
In a statement released this Friday, the Civic Front said it watched the parliamentary debate with “distrust and concern” over the abolition of tolls in the former SCUT, the Public-Private Road Partnership, for not redirecting rents paid state to concessionaires. .
“Parliament gave us a celebration of hypocrisy, culminating in the approval of a carefully crafted measure so as not to infringe on the rents paid to private individuals who captured the state in the former SCUT business. An Assembly that spends hours debating 400 million euros and does not touch the 800 million annually supplied to the concessionaires, he is completely subordinate to these interests,” emphasizes the President of the Civil Front, Paulo Morais, quoted in the note.
According to the association, public-private partnerships (PPPs), which have been celebrated in Portugal since the mid-1990s and during the first decade of the 21st century, are “a destructive business that needs to be extinguished.”
“If it is true that the abolition of tolls could lead to a reduction in state revenues of a maximum of 400 million euros, then it is also true that the state is unjustifiably paying double the amount to concessionaires, that is, 800 million, all years,” the note says.
The Civic Front believes that stopping this business will not only allow former SCUT users to stop paying tolls, but at the same time will generate 400 million euros annually into public coffers.
The association recalls that “due to inequality and the huge budgetary burden, the reform of road PPPs was included in the Troika rescue plan in 2011 and became the target of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry of the Assembly of the Republic, which recommended its revision.” or extinction.”
However, as the Civil Front states, “even after two renegotiation processes – in 2010 by the PS government and since 2012 by the PSD/CDS government – these concessions continue to represent a drain on public resources.”
The association recalls that the state budget (OE) for 2024 envisages a total expenditure for road PPPs of the order of 10 thousand and 800 million euros until the end of the concessions in 2040, a figure that “contrasts with the real cost.” calculated by Eurostat.
The civil front argues that the state should end the PPP by compensating the concessionaires at the updated value of the assets calculated by Eurostat.
“These savings should now be reflected in the 2025 state budget or possible amendments to the 2024 budget, which should include a reduction in expected gross expenditures from the approximately 1,200 million budgeted this Friday to values of approximately 400 million.” This is reported by the Civil Front.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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