CAF promotes highway maintenance and road safety in Bolivia

(La Paz, Dec. 10, 2012).- Proper road maintenance is essential to ensure road saftey and to protect of significiant investments that countries make in their road networks. This is the conclusion of two workshops organized by CAF –development bank of Latin America– in La Paz and Santa Cruz, attended by executives of the Bolivian Highway Administration (ABC) and other state agencies linked to the country’s road system.

CAF has provided critical support for the development of road infrastructure in Bolivia, both the domestic network and the cross-border network linking Bolivia with neighboring countries. It also promotes the strengthening public policies and institutions responsible for the implementation of road projects and highway maintenance.

The workshops identified best practices related to road maintenance according to local and international experiences. Participants discussed measures implemented in other countries in terms of policy, management, inventory and maintenance plans for primary and secondary roads.

Diego Sánchez, senior specialist at the Sector Analysis and Programming of CAF, said the steady increase in vehicle and freight traffic requires prevention and quick action for road maintenance, but warned that the policies and procedures to ensure conservation are limited and scarce in many countries.

He highlighted the importance of adequate controls, as well as investing in preventive measures to ensure roadworthinessand safety. Mr. Sánchez said this goal calls for road plans, methodologies and resources.

In turn, Erick de las Heras, national coordinator of the ABC, gave an overview of the institution’s work, saying that preserving in good condition all the roads in Bolivia and ensuring road safety required a $700 million budget, only 40% of which is available, with loans awarded by CAF and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), as well as financing provided by the National Treasury (TGN).

De las Heras added that, despite the insufficient budget and because several roads are deteriorating, ABC began a road maintenance program three years ago that aims at damage prevention rather than repair.

With his experience on this issue, the director of the Spanish Association of Highway Maintenance and Operation, Pablo Sáez, said that technicians need to show decision-makers how infrastructure investment is profitable. In order to be sustainable, the management of prevention and maintenance plans has to handled by expert technicians, he said.

“We must be clear that roads are essential assets that provide mobility to people and allow the transportation of the bulk of a country’s’ goods,” he said.

In this regard, he suggested signing broad regional or even nationwide maintenance contracts, as opposed to individual local ones, to reduce inefficiencies and the diluting of responsibilities. He also recommended service contracts, instead of construction work contracts, in order to better regulate them.

When contracts are signed on an individual local basis and a problem arises that can be attributed to a lack of maintence, it is difficult to identify who is responsible. However, when a contract is broad-based or even nationwide, there is only party responsible, he said.

Experts who led the workshops were: Pablo Sáez, director of the Spanish Association of Highway Maintenance and Operation (ACEX); Ernesto Barrera, national head of Chile’s Maintenance Department and deputy director of Maintenance at the Road Division of the Public Works Ministry; Raúl Torres Trujillo, national director of Peru's PROVIAS; and José Carlos Valdecantos, Daniel Muñoz and José María Bonilla, representatives of maintenannce contracts of international companies ALVAC, ImesAPI and ELSAMEX, respectively.