The Mintrans statement comes a week after it was announced that the operator International Container Terminal Services Inc (ICTSI), from the Philippines, presented, in the Supreme Court of Angola, two precautionary measures challenging the delivery of the management of the port of Luanda to the Dubai Ports World (DPW), a multinational based in Dubai.
As the weekly Valor Económico advanced at the time, the ICTSI referred, in the defense, to "serious mishaps" committed by the concession evaluation committee (CAC) and asked the court to "reinstate the genuine terms of the tender, valuing, in full, competitors' offers by awarding the terminal's concession to the best ranked ".
Mintrans understands, however, that ICTSI's allegations that CAC violated the principle of public interest by having qualified DPW's proposal in the first place are unfounded, because the State "defined it as a public interest, in addition to the financial criterion, materialized through the grantor's remuneration, technical criteria for efficiency gains, improvement of infrastructures, adoption of the best international port management practices and increased handling of the multi-use terminal ".
According to the ministry, the valuation of the proposals presented was aimed at evaluating financial and technical aspects, in order to allow choosing the one that best defended the public interest.
In a long statement, Mintrans cites examples of valuation, such as the grantor's remuneration, and justifies that the evaluation considered not only financial aspects, but also the coherence of the proposals presented.
In this context, it indicates that the ICTSI proposal "presented several serious inconsistencies": very significant traffic growth in the first five years of the concession, without solid arguments to justify it, the terminal organization plan "difficult to sustain in technical terms", and expansion of the terminal area, an impossibility under the terms of the open tender.
"Therefore, the competitor ICTSI presented a proposal based on assumptions of unsupported traffic growth, on the reception of ships which is a technical impossibility, and also on operating assumptions inconsistent with the physical limits of the concession", underlined the tutelage.
In addition, he added, the ICTSI proposal had a score regarding the value of investment in national incorporation.
These "serious deficiencies" resulted in negative impacts on the final valuation of the ICTSI proposal, which was overtaken by competitor DP World in the final stage, Mintrans said, adding that although the Dubai company did not have the highest financial component, " it was in the general reckoning, taking into account the technical and financial aspects, the coherence and the risk for the grantor, the proposal that proved to be more balanced and, unequivocally, the one that best defends the public interest ".
The tender for the concession of the multi-purpose terminal in the Port of Luanda, announced on December 16, 2019, featured nine expressions of interest, with five proposals submitted: Sifax Group, Terminal Link / Multiparks (TL-MP), MSC-SAS Shipping Agencies, DPW and ICTSI.
Three submitted proposals that were analyzed by the evaluation committee, and DPW was announced as the winner.
The contract with DP World provides for the concession of the terminal management until 2040, a deal that includes a global agreement of one billion dollars, over the 20 years of concession, and starts with the payment to the Angolan State of 150 million dollars for this concession, and the port of Luanda is expected to ensure an annual movement of 700 thousand containers.
At the signing of the contract, on 25 January, the Minister of Transport, Ricardo Abreu, stressed that the international tender took place in a rigorous and transparent manner, despite "some voices that arose, questioning the smoothness of the process".
