Bolivia: A review by the Technical Office for Strengthening Public Enterprises (OFEP) has deemed the ECEBOL cement plant in Potosí unable to operate indefinitely due to ‘severe planning and logistics deficiencies’ in its development under the previous government administration.
OFEP Director Pablo Camacho strongly questioned the administrative and budgetary decisions guiding the execution of this state project in an interview with local press, arguing that the infrastructure was placed in an unviable location for extractive activities and commercial transportation. “The cement plant in Potosí is never going to produce cement,” said Camacho. “It saddens me because I am from Potosí and this is a wound we Potosí residents carry because we were lied to. They built the plant in the least suitable place, 100km from the limestone deposit and forgot to build a road. They left us without gas. The plant will not have gas!” Camacho also stated that there is no adequate railway line to transport the projected cement volumes to the markets in southern Peru and northern Chile, export goals that justified the plant’s construction, but for which the necessary infrastructure was never built.
The report into the Potosí plant is part of a broader institutional diagnosis prepared by OFEP, which identified 20 state-owned companies in what it deemed ‘critical condition.’