The Administración de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias Sociedad del Estado (ADIFSE), trading as Trenes Argentinos Infraestructura, is an Argentine state-owned company created in 2008 to manage rail construction and maintenance in Argentina. It is a division of the Ferrocarriles Argentinos S.E. holding company.
History
Before railway privatisation in Argentina began in 1989, railway infrastructure was managed by the original Ferrocarriles Argentinos. After FA was formally declared in liquidation, railway infrastructure administration was left in the hands of a new organism called Ente Nacional de Administración de Bienes Ferroviarios (ENABIEF, in English: National Entity for the Administration of Railway Assets), created in 1996.[1]
In 2000 ENABIEF was fused with the Dirección Nacional de Bienes del Estado, as part of the National Organism for the Administration of Assets (ONABE), which was formed to administrate all state assets, including the railways.
Throughout the period of private management of the railways, it was the contractual obligation of the operators (assigned through competitive bidding) to maintain the railway infrastructure they were operating, rather than the state, which simply allocated parts of the railways to different companies. However, the vast majority of private companies failed in their contractual obligations to maintain the infrastructure.