The General Director of the National Roads Institute (INVIAS for its Spanish acronym), through External Circular Letter No. 001 issued on March 23, 2020  informed that, due to the sanitary emergency presented with COVID-19, from March 24, 2020 at 11:59 p.m and until the date in which the compulsory confinement measure is lifted, the contracts for civil works, supervision (interventoría), consulting, concession, operation, logistic and administrative services, and other agreements (“convenios”) signed by INVÍAS will be totally or partially suspended, in accordance with the following criteria:

i)    Contracts with partial suspension of activities: Civil works contract and supervision agreements (“interventoría”) whose object and/or scope includes activities of integral road management, attention to landslides, operation of level crossings and concession of tolls, will have a partial suspension only in those activities that are not part of the operation, service and attention to emergencies.

ii)    Contracts with total suspension of activities: Civil works, auditing, consulting and logistical and administrative services contracts which do not require the performance of activities that lead to guaranteeing the continuity of the operation of the road infrastructure and that do not contain activities such as those described in the previous section, will be totally suspended.

iii)    Contracts without suspension of activities: Contracts that include in their object and/or scope activities for the operation of tunnels, road administration, micro-companies, emergency attention for exhaustible amount, service of ambulance, crane and workshop car. Moreover, neither will be suspended the civil works and auditing (interventoría) contracts that during the sanitary emergency carry out work activities that due to technical, operative and security reasons (for the operation of the road infrastructure and the vehicular traffic) must continue under performance in corridors that are strategic for the connectivity.

Additionally, consultancy contracts, whose field activities has been completed and which can be completed by teleworking, will not be suspended. Similarly, the inter-administrative agreements in charge of the National Road Safety Program - PSCN signed with INTERNEXA, whose main purpose is to allow the armed forces, army and police to visualize the national roads and ensure safety on the roads, will not be suspended.

The suspension will be carried out by mutual agreement with the contractors. Such procedure will be carried out by electronic means. The suspension procedure shall be subject to that provided for in Article 25.3 of the INVÍAS Contracting Manual and the provisions of the Financial Controller's Manual in force.