Next Generation European funds have financed 556 public works tenders in Catalonia in the first half of the year, worth 654.5 million euros, which represents 27% of the public works tenders in this period, according to the data presented. today by the Chamber of Contractistes d’Obres de Catalunya (CCOC).
The importance of these funds, in a context of growing budgetary difficulties for the public sector, led contractors to demand “public-private collaborations, to achieve maximum efficiency in the management of European funds”, accelerate their implementation and “be able to meet the deadlines set by Europe and be able to transform and modernize Catalonia.”
Lluís Moreno, president of the Chamber, recalled that Spain has only committed 35,000 million euros of the 70,000 that it would have to contribute to use all the European funds, and that the European Union requires that the works to be financed be finished in February 2026. “The State is running out of ideas to use these funds, and should open them to private initiative,” he assured.
Until September, the public tender for works reached 2,424 million euros, 5% more than in the same period of 2022, although in quarterly terms, the tender decreased by 9.4% compared to the second quarter of 2023 with contracts of 835 millions. The decrease, according to the CCOC, is largely due to the hangover from the municipal elections: the local administration was the one that tendered the most in these nine months, with 47.5% of the total and 1,152 million euros, although it was reduced 12% in interannual terms “as a result of the end of the electoral cycle and the beginning of the legislature of the consistories.”
According to the Chamber’s Tender Report, the Generalitat increased tenders by 3% year-on-year, and reached 700 million, 28.9% of the total, while the central government tendered for a value of 571 million, with a year-on-year increase of 81% and represented 23.6% of the total.
The main tender of the Generalitat was the framework agreement for the construction and renovation of public facilities by Infraestructures.cat, while that of the State was the Vallbona bypass (Barcelona) and the burying of line R2 in Montcada i Reixac ( Barcelona) by Adif.
The contractors highlighted the impact that the rise in the prices of raw materials, energy and, more recently, salaries is having on public bidding, because many specifications do not update the budgets. Thus, they explained, since 2021, 954 tenders have been void for a total amount of 312 million. And the number of offers in the tenders has fallen: last year in 44% of the tenders only 1 or 2 bidders were presented, when in previous years this only happened in 24% of the works.
“There are tenders that come out taking into account the prices of the materials that were in 2019,” Moreno lamented. The majority of works that remain empty are from city councils, but there are also those from other administrations, and they are mostly small, with an average budget of 360,000 euros, he assured.
To stop this trend, the CCOC calls for tendering public contracts with budgets updated with market prices; increase the limit of the exceptional price review of public contracts that the government approved, and move it from 20% to 30% and include labor within the costs that allow the price of awarded works to be reviewed, given the current “ environment of increasing evolution of salary costs”.
