The General Manager of Business Development and Executive Member of the Board of Directors gave the starting signal for a new large investment cycle of the Group in the fields of concessions and PPPs inside and outside Greece. her GEK TERNA, Mr. Manos Moustakasfrom the stage of the Infrastructure and Transport Conference.

“Having already strategically placed ourselves in an industry where we have the competitive advantage, given the verticalization that the Group has and also the ability of GEK TERNA to control every risk stage of the project, we are fully prepared to claim deservedly any large concession project that is auctioned in the wider SE Europe “he said characteristically, adding that “since the capital firepower we have is multiple times the corresponding projects expected in our country, it is a given that we are looking beyond Greece”.

According to Mr. Moustakas, GEK TERNA is making the specific leap towards the future now, when the opportunities for infrastructure investments in Greece and South-Eastern Europe are crystallizing, with reasonable returns. “We believe that this development plan of GEK TERNA fully meets what the international investment community is now looking for: clear targeting, efficient structure, verticalization with competitive advantages, specialized expertise in the design, financing, implementation and operation of large infrastructure projects, as well as healthy fundamentals, based on solid cash, non-recourse borrowing and predictable, stable and strong cash flows over decades.”

Referring to the superiority of the GEK TERNA Group in the specific sector, Mr. Moustakas noted that, with the existing cash reserves of the parent company, the expected dividends from all the projects that are or will be commissioned in the next few years, as well as the additional liquidity from the sale of TERNA ENERGY, the total investment power of the Group exceeds 3 billion euros as money that can be used for equity in investments. Taking into account the possibility of leverage through borrowing, this amount is multiplied and is available for project financing.

Consequently, GEK TERNA is shielded with an arsenal of significant additional funds, exclusively for claiming new major infrastructure projects and concessions in Greece and abroad, since for all major projects in which the Group had already prevailed through international tenders (e.g. Attiki Odos, Egnatia Odos, New International Airport of Heraklion, etc.) have already been secured, both the financing lines and the participation itself.

The General Manager of Business Development and Executive Member of the Board of Directors of GEK TERNA, however, also referred to the country’s institutional framework, commenting characteristically that “there are points that need improvement in the model of concessions and PPPs and which create – justified in my opinion – reservations”.

More specifically, Mr. Moustakas made special mention of the fact that although the private sector warned during the preparation period of the projects, both about their maturity and about the uneven and ineffective distribution of project responsibilities, these concerns were unfortunately not listened to .

“So all of us investors find ourselves having to take responsibility for issues that are practically out of our control, such as meeting the schedule in terms of design and construction, when at the same time in road construction projects there is no commitment from the State for issues of moving networks or for a specific schedule of land allocation, or even water availability in the case of an irrigation project”, said Mr. Moustakas.

In addition, he spoke of an imbalance between the financial data with which a project may have been auctioned and the actual market conditions when it came time for the tender, giving as an example the provisions for availability payments, i.e. the maximum contribution of the State, which have been made with cost data that from the time of writing the preliminary study of the Service to the Tender have increased unimaginably, with the result that the project is not financeable even with a zero discount.

“So, the co-financed projects are beneficial and attractive, as long as they are prepared with the simple and tested logics that we have successfully used in the past, making effective use of the Dialogue mechanism between the candidates and the contracting authorities so that they are mutually beneficial” concluded Mr. Mustache.