In the Name of the Pandemic: A Case Study of Contractual Modifications in PPP Solicited and Unsolicited Proposals in COVID-19 Times

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented political, social, and economic repercussions that simultaneously affect the public, private, and users, triggering construction, demand, and credit risks in road Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). Given the magnitude of this impact, incipient literature has analyzed how specific projects addressed the shock from multiple perspectives in record time. Nevertheless, a thorough comparison of contractual renegotiations produced by the pandemic among initiation processes [i.e., Solicited Proposals (SP) and Unsolicited Proposals (USP)] is missing. Therefore, this paper aims to extend the understanding of COVID implications by analyzing PPP contractual governance, under unprecedented uncertainty, in the most recent road PPP program in Colombia, including 29 projects. This analysis was developed with a case study based on public information. Findings reveal that contractual modifications derived from COVID-19 were mainly driven by extending the project schedule, increasing concessionaire’s liquidity in the middle term, and reducing the project scope. Overall, the empirical findings indicate that USP was much more renegotiated than SP, which suggests that the public sector is more prone to guaranteeing the intended private’s sector conditions in projects initiated by the same private sector.