Andean Group - October 2012 (ISSN 1741-4466)

Pushing ahead with the Tipnis road: On 6 October the Morales government announced that it had signed a contract with two Bolivian companies, Empresa Boliviana de Construcción (EBC) and Asociación de Mantenimiento Vial (Amvi), for the first part of the controversial Tunari-San Ignacio de Moxos highway, the second part of which runs through an indigenous territory (Tioc) and national park, Isiboro Sécure (Tipnis). The announcement comes despite the fact that the prior consultation (consulta) asking local residents whether they were in favour of the road’s construction is still taking place. The consulta began on 29 July and is due to finish in December. The construction of the road, which comprises three tranches - Villa Tunari-Isinuta; Isinuta-Monte Grande; and Monte Grande-San Ignacio de Moxos - had previously been contracted out to the Brazilian construction company OAS with the Brazilian state-owned development bank (Bndes) to have stumped up US$332m of the US$415m total. However, Morales cancelled the contract in April, which had added to uncertainty over the project [RA-12-04]. Morales’s latest announcement regarding the contract for the 47km Villa Tunari-Isinuta tranche, at a cost of US$32.5m, led opposition politicians such as Luis Felipe Dorado, the bench leader of the right-wing Convergencia Nacional party in the lower chamber of congress, to call on the government to clarify how it intended to pay for the project.

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