Vial Unión del Sur, a Sacyr Concesiones Company, and Sundico, have won the LatinFinance Award in the category Infrastructure Financing of the Year: Andes for the financing of the 4G Rumichaca-Pasto project in Nariño, on the border between Colombia and Ecuador, for US$ 800 million. This financing involved a US $278 million multi-trench bank loan, another loan in Colombian pesos equivalent to US$ 260 million and a social bond for US$ 262 million.
To give the award, LatinFinance considered factors such as how innovative the operation was, when it took place, its prevision, quality, social and environmental impact, structuring and its impact on the market. This was possible thanks to the commitment, effort and dedication of all collaborators involved in this project and the team leaders.
Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan were the structurers and bookrunners for the issuance. IDB Invest (IDB Group) was the anchor investor and has subscribed the equivalent to US$ 135 million. Furthermore, it also assisted in the design of the methodological framework to obtain the social bond label.
The bond and loan receiving the social label comes after an evaluation process and analysis by VE (Moody's ESG Solutions), which ratifies that the bond and the loans align with the basic components of the Social Bond Principles 2021 of the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) and the Social Loan Principles 2021 of the Loan Syndications and Trading Association (LSTA).
On the Colombian-Ecuadorian border
The Rumichaca-Pasto project, in Nariño, at 83-km-long, will improve road connections in Colombia, more specifically in the connections to Ecuador, and thus, promoting the social and economic development of the Colombian southwestern regions.
Likewise, it will help reduce travel times and transport costs, directly impacting the more than 550,000 inhabitants of the seven municipalities around the road corridor: Ipiales, Contadero, Iles, Imués, Tangua, Yacuanquer and Pasto.
The construction phase of the project created around 12,946 direct jobs, 80% of which were filled with locals from the project’s influence areas.
More than 17,500 people will directly benefit from more than 1,400 social and environmental activities that include training sessions, tree planting sessions, support to productive projects, entrepreneurs, health brigades and more.