Details:

Creators:
Campos-Mindez, Javier ; Estache, Antonio ; Trujillo, Lourdes
Campos-Mindez, Javier ; Estache, Antonio ; Trujillo, Lourdes Less -
Corporate Creators:
World Bank
Subject/TRT Terms:
[+]
Accounting Argentina Contract Administration Private Railroads Public Private Partnerships Railroad Concessions Railroads Regulatory Reform
Resource Type:
Research Paper
Geographical Coverage:
Argentina
Corporate Publisher:
World Bank
Abstract:
Almost a decade after Argentina began privatizing its railways, resolution of the conflicts between regulators, users, and operators continues to take longer, and to be more difficult, than expected. This paper argues that many of these conflicts are the result of a failure to create a set of rules of interactions between the key stakeholders: government, regulators, users, unions and the media. Most concession contracts proved to be incomplete in terms of the information requirements needed to anticipate pricing and investment related problems. Moreover, the necessary autonomous but accountable regulatory capacity has never been fully developed for this sector in Argentina. In particular, as the level of private participation increases in the sector, Argentina's problem was every regulator's problem: how to regulate monopolies when the actual cost and production information is directly controlled by these monopolies. To be effective, any regulatory agency has to be granted access to a minimum level of consistent information. It must also be given instructions on the mechanisms it needs to follow to use this information and how to tailor them to the regulatory commitments. After an introductory section, the second section discusses in some detail the main regulatory functions and information needs in contexts where concession contracts are in use, adapting general well-known principles to the Argentine railways case. Section 3 identifies efficiency measurement as one of those particular needs in the Argentine case and provides elements for regulatory accounting on this issue. Section 4 analyzes access prices as a second example of what regulatory accounting can and cannot do. Finally, Section 5 deals with two other important issues for Argentina's railways: pricing and information for renegotiation, two critically relevant issues at the moment. Section 6 concludes identifying the main weaknesses and strengths of the current practices and provides some practical recommendations for its improvement. References. (45 p; 171 kb)
Format:
PDF
Collection(s):
US Transportation Collection
Main Document Checksum:
[+]
urn:sha256:b6722412e3645df92d539614dd0d92c1140dd2f2adea0f6a929ff85eb1e5b57a
Download URL:
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/34113/dot_34113_DS1.pdf
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