As previously announced, the national government has canceled the call for tenders for the Paraguay-Paraná Waterway and ordered the Legal Affairs Department to prepare a detailed report to be submitted to the National Competition Defense Commission.
The decision had been foreshadowed by the presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, a little over 10 days ago. “The only bid submitted was from DEME, which tainted the process with allegations of lack of transparency, lawsuits, and other actions that were dropped just a few days before (the submission of bids),” the official stated during a press conference at the Casa Rosada.
Now, the measure has been made official through the publication of Resolution 7/2025 in the Official Gazette, which states: “The selection procedure for the National and International Public Tender No. 1/2024, called by the former Undersecretariat of Ports and Navigable Waterways through Disposition No. 34/24, under Law No. 17,520 and its amendments, for the modernization, expansion, operation, and maintenance of the signaling system and dredging, re-dredging, and maintenance tasks of the Trunk Navigable Waterway, spanning from kilometer 1238 of the Paraná River, at the point known as Confluencia, to the Natural Deep Water Zone in the outer Río de la Plata, up to kilometer 239.1 of the Punta Indio channel, via the Emilio Mitre Channel, the Paraná de las Palmas River, the Paraná Bravo River, the Paraná Guazú River, the Talavera River, and the Paraná River–Atlantic Ocean, is hereby canceled.”
Additionally, the regulation instructs the Legal Affairs Department to conduct a thorough report on the tender process and forward the proceedings to the National Competition Defense Commission.
Among its arguments, it was noted that, “the procedure had 11 companies registered to participate, and 121 inquiries were made through the aforementioned system, all of which were answered in a timely manner”. “The opening of Envelope No. 1 resulted in a single bid, submitted by the firm Dredging, Environmental and Marine Engineering NV, CUIT No. 20-20617010-8,” they reported.
On this matter, the Executive argued that “it is a cardinal principle of any tender process to have a wide variety of bidders to enable greater competition, which favors the selection of the most advantageous offer for the national government.”
In this regard, Adorni had stated that the government committed, from the start of the process, to conducting a “transparent and competitive” tender. He also recalled that it had been established as a condition to cancel the process if only one bidder came forward. Along these lines, he mentioned that throughout the procedure, there were “pressures” from political, business, and media sectors to modify the technical requirements of the tender specifications. Additionally, accusations were made against the government for allegedly favoring Jan de Nul, the current concessionaire of the waterway, which ultimately did not submit a bid.
For its part, the Executive responded to the challenges from potential bidders and maintained that the judiciary validated the legality of the tender process in three instances. However, Adorni insisted that the only bid received was from DEME, a company that had previously filed complaints about the alleged lack of transparency and later withdrew them before participating as the sole contender.
The spokesman stated that the investigation aims to “clarify the events that occurred within the framework of this tender” and determine criminal liability in case of an attempted fraud. Subsequently, he gave the floor to Iñaki Arreseygor, executive director of the National Ports and Navigation Agency, who provided technical details about the situation.
Arreseygor emphasized that “the fact that DEME was the only company to submit a bid demonstrates that we were dealing with a transparent administrative procedure on the part of the national government, which was upheld three times in court.”