Buenos Aires, April 26 (EFECOM).- Toll rates for traveling on national highways in Argentina rose 200% this Friday, amid complaints from user and transport associations.
The new tariff tables were approved by the National Road Directorate after holding a citizen consultation that the National Committee for the Defense of Road Users (CONADUV) has rejected as a “simple formalism, merely decorative.”
The strong rate increase is due, as Vialidad Nacional alleged in a statement, to the “considerable increase registered in the price variation of certain main components of the areas of operation, conservation and maintenance and support services, which affect the level of provision of user services”.
The increase applies to a dozen roads throughout the country, including an access highway to Buenos Aires, operated by the state company Corredores Viales.
The last update was last November and, since then, the consumer price index in Argentina has accumulated an increase of close to 100%.
According to user associations, in the last year and a half tolls have accumulated an increase of 800%.
The Government said that, starting next June, the rate review will be monthly “in order to avoid delays that could affect the provision of services in the road corridors.”
In a statement, CONADUV called the new increase “unjustified, totally inappropriate, unfair, illegal and lacking any technical-economic basis from the point of view of economic transportation engineering.”
He also questioned the public hearing “of a non-binding and non-face-to-face nature, in writing, and with the sole purpose of imposing and enabling a new increase in toll rates.”
For its part, the Argentine Federation of Freight Motor Transport Business Entities (FADEEAC), which represents 4,500 freight transport SMEs throughout the country, also expressed in a statement its “strongest rejection” of the increase due to its impact on the sector and given the importance of freight transportation throughout the country’s economic activity, since more than 90% of freight moves by road.
The federation warned that this occurs when the sector already suffered a cost increase of 247.6% in 2023, the highest in 30 years, and is now suffering from an abrupt drop in activity, which averages 40%, according to the entity. . EFECOM
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