The infrastructure workshop held in Madrid on 26 March last was just the latest in a series of annual events no major builder wants to miss.

Minister of Development Ana Pastor delivered the keynote address of the Seventh Infrastructure Sector Meeting organized by Deloitte. She announced that the government is looking at up-to-fifty-percent co-financing for new projects under the public/private partnership model, and she explained that the new model for concessions will rely on revising concessions' maximum duration and sharing the risks between concession receivers and concession givers.

José Mayor, chairman of FCC Construcción, participated in the round table on the sector's outlooks and big companies' strategies, which followed close on the heels of the keynote address. He said real investment is fundamental in order to keep economic activity going, and he reminded his audience that falling investment in civil engineering works has crippled GDP growth before. He stressed that, in countries where public works report negative growth rates, the GDP does not grow, and he advocated public/private partnerships.

The second round table dealt with the concession sector's outlooks and the opportunities in public/private partnerships. Luis Sánchez, general manager of Globalvia Infraestructuras, asserted that concessions must not be allowed to turn into auctions. For this reason, he asked the government to speak clearly and act responsibly and not to hang the risks involved in concession projects on the concession holders. He said concession contracts need to be revised regularly in order to adjust to new market conditions.

The event was brought to a close by Juan Lazcano, president of the National Building Confederation, who reminded his audience that the public works tenders announced by the different levels of government closed in 2011 at 13,755 million euros, the lowest investment volume of the last fifteen years.