This highway concession companies asked Ministry of Transport rise tolls It was 8.4% due to the increase. According to the sources in the sector, inflation will be effective from next year. The department, headed by Raquel Sánchez, should make a decision before the end of the year on whether to adopt this approach.
For this reason, the sector is waiting for a response from the government, which can prevent such a sharp interest rate increase in a period when traffic has not fully recovered after the pandemic. Options for smoothing the rise in toll charges include r probability based on industry experience.Make an increase of less than 8.4% with a different payment from another channel, or make this increase within a few years. Another formula might be to extend the concession, but highway concessionaires find it the most complex variable.
Regardless, the Executive must make a decision before 31 December this year. Tolls paid by drivers on state highways are updated as cumulative CPI for the last twelve months until 30 November. Another issue, Motorways are the responsibility of autonomous communities, as in Catalonia., in this case there is a similar formula but uses a month before November as the year-end close. Therefore, Generalitat also has to make a decision within the next two weeks.
This mechanism is not isolated from Spanish motorways, but is used in all countries to update toll road fares with increasing prices. The aforementioned formulas are also common in other areas so that consumers do not have a sharp increase in their pockets. In the case of Spanish highways, pre-pandemic levels have yet to be reached due to, among other reasons, the rise in gasoline prices, discounts on public transport and increased teleworking. sector.