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Colombia's national development bank, Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional (FDN) has announced that the Transversal del Sigla road PPP project has reached financial close. The project involves the rehabilitation of 137km of road linking Sisga to Aguaclara, running through the departments of Casanare, Boyacá and Cundinamarca.

The project has secured financing amounting to COP575.2 billion (US$200 million). This includes a senior loan of COP172 billion (US$59.7 million) and a liquidity loan of COP50 billion (US$17.4 million) from FDN, and a COP90 billion (US$31.2 million) loan from ICO (Instituto de Crédito Oficial de España), a Spanish state-owned bank attached to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

The private debt funds Ashmore-CAF and Blackrock have also contributed to the financial close.

This is the first project to benefit from the Colombian peso credit line that FDN launched last year, which allows foreign financial institutions to lend in pesos.

It was awarded to a consortium comprising Grupo Ortiz, KMA Construcciones and Obresca in May 2015. Having secured a significant debt financing package in 2016, the developers began the rehabilitation works, which include reconstruction of the road paving and rehabilitation of 15 tunnels and 53 bridges. The highway is expected to be operational in September 2019.

The road will significantly reduce travel time from central Colombia to the eastern plains. The existing route, the Transversal de Cusiana, takes 5.3 hours to travel, whereas the Transversal del Sigla will take 4.8 hours once fully rehabilitated.

The project belongs to the 4G programme - the Fourth Generation Toll Road Concession Programme (Cuarta Generación de Concesiones), currently the largest road infrastructure programme in Latin America. It consists of 40 projects that span 7,000km and require an investment of around COP47 trillion (US$16.5 billion) to construct. 

The Transversal del Sigla is the thirteenth 4G project to reach financial close.