By Richard Torné
Eight loss-making toll roads across the country – including the AP-7 Vera-Cartagena motorway – are to be nationalised, the Government has announced.
The tax payer will be expected to foot the €5 billion bill for taking over the privately-run operators, including Aucosta, which runs the Vera-Cartagena road and is saddled with a €550 million debt.
Following more than two years of horse trading between the government, the toll road operators and the banks (which at one point were owed €3.4 billion), public works minister Iñigo de la Serna said he would be reviving a 2014 rescue plan under which half the debt owed by the operators would be written off and a wholly state-owned company created to run the roads.
