PRIVATIZATION Sale of Italian tollster to proceed

PRIVATIZATION

Sale of Autostrade to proceed

Italy’s government is to proceed with original plans to sell the largest state toll motorway authority to investors. Reports from Rome indicate the Cabinet decided Jan 9 to overrule a watchdog agency which delayed the proposed sale last autumn. The Court of Accounts as it is translated, the equivalent of a government accounting or budget office, argued that the proposed 38-year franchise involved in the privatization of Autostrade SpA was too long, and suggested 20 years. This threatened to upset an elaborate financing plan and to greatly reduce the money the government would get from the sale.

The disagreement over the terms of the sale (around $2.5b) caused an impasse, only resolved recently when the government decided to proceed with the original 38 year franchise sale.

Autostrade will be the world’s largest investor-owned toll road system. It has just over 2,855km of toll mwy, about half the mwy km in the country. The A1 Milan-Rome-Naples known as the Autostrade del Sole (Sun) is 803km and the A-14 Bologna-Taranto 781km and it has 14 other mwys 30km to 250km in length. 886km is 2x3-lanes and the group has a vigorous program of widening and improvements and small extensions of its network. Smaller toll companies are doing most of the country’s extensions. The largest improvements going on costing $3.5b are in the mountainous Bologne-Florence section of Autostrade’s A1.

The company takes almost 3m tolls/day at 220 toll points from motorists driving nearly 100m veh-km/day. Tolling is mixed being on both a trip basis with tickets registering entry and exit and also at points or ‘barriers’ along the tollways. Autostrade was a pioneer in electronic toll collection and has over 600k TELEPASS transponders or e-tags in use. Its patrons also make extensive use of self-swipe magnetic stripe VIACARD — plastic account debit and credit cards that the motorist runs through a reader.

The company has an international subsidiary with interests in toll roads in Hungary, the Czech Rep and Virginia. It also has a construction arm and does extensive research and development.

Autostrade has been part of the state owned IRI, a huge group of state owned and directed businesses going back to Mussolini, which are all being slowly privatized and divested as part of overall economic liberalization and reform. Other IRI properties being sold are Alitalia, the state airline, Finmare, a shipping line, and Finmeccanica, a manufacturing and defense company. (Contact 39 6 4361 2851 a.int@autostrade.it)