Colombia Expects Year-end Magdalena River Project

Cormagdalena, Colombia’s river management authority, has requested the country’s finance ministry, as well as the nation’s planning department, DNP, to make agile the process of closing a new contract for the recovery of the local Magdalena River. Cormagdalena wants the new contract to be signed by year end. “We don’t want the project, which is a bet for the country, to go away and beyond the government of president Juan Manuel Santos,” the entity said in a statement. “We do have the project structured, all design is ready. We expect we leave this needed process, so we can have the CONFIS document that will allow us to issue the tender,” it said. CONFIS stands for Colombia’s Superior Council on Fiscal Policy. Cormagdalena’s Executive Director Alfredo Varela De la Rosa expects a contract could be signed before 2018. A consortium named Navelena, made up of Brazilian company Odebrecht and the Colombian government Valorcon, was formed to dredge the Magdalena River, but Colombia’s river management authority had to terminate the contract. The deal aimed to restore navigability of the Magdalena River.