More than 300 public works have been left unawarded in the islands between January 2021 and 2023 due to the impossibility of companies to comply with the contracts because they do not adjust to market prices, according to the Association of Construction and Developers of Las Palmas (AECP).
The AECP has assured that this situation highlights "the stubbornness" of most public administrations and the "flagrant breach" of basic rules in administrative contracting, as the number of unawarded works tripled in 2022 compared to 2021.
City councils top the list of unawarded works, valued at 57.8 million euros, which represents 40.2% of the total, followed by the State Administration, with 25.03 million and 18% of the total.
For their part, the island councils have stopped tendering works valued at 24.35 million, which represents 17% of the total, while the autonomous community reaches 23.8 million and 16.8%.
The public companies AENA and TRAGSA stopped tendering works for an amount of 11 million euros, 8% of the total they put out to public tender.
"City councils refuse to revise prices"
By type of work, sports infrastructures, hydraulics, roads, pipelines and networks, as well as urban, educational equipment, transport stations, geriatric centers, cultural centers, parking lots, laboratories and rehabilitation of public buildings, among many others, have not been able to be tendered, says the AECP.
The builders and developers of Las Palmas also complain that the vast majority of public administrations, especially the city councils, refuse to revise the prices of the works that are in execution (contracted at prices prior to market tensions in terms of raw materials), thus incurring in "unjust enrichment, financing themselves at the expense of the executing companies and their suppliers, generating a chain of uncertainty and economic losses".
However, the business association recognizes that the autonomous community has adhered to the exceptional royal decree on price revision and has cooperated by subsidizing 100% of the companies for the works management fee (4%), as have the island councils of Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura, although no other administration is responding to the evident imbalance of the contracts signed with the companies.
