October 19 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's Road Infrastructure Agency said on Thursday it has opened a new tender for design and construction of Zheleznitsa road tunnel on Struma motorway, part of pan-European transport Corridor IV.
The tender, which also includes construction of road sections at both ends of the two-kilometre long tunnel, has an indicative value of 250 million levs ($150.7 million/128 million euro).
The tender is divided into three lots to ensure completion of works on schedule, the government agency said in a statement.
Lots 1 and 3, which envisage the construction of road sections immediately before and after the tunnel, have indicative values of 33.5 million levs and 22.1 million levs and must be completed within 600 days and 660 days, respectively.
Lot 2, which includes the design and construction of the tunnel, has an indicative value of 194.3 million levs. Its construction must be completed within 1,060 days.
Candidates can submit their offers by November 27, 2017.
The project, which benefits from EU financing under Operational Programme Transport and Transport Infrastructure 2014-2020, must be completed by December 2023 in order to comply with the programme's requirements or the country might lose the financing.
The project has been delayed by the cancellation of the previous two tenders .
The initial tender procedure for the construction of Zheleznitsa tunnel was cancelled in April because the National Company Strategic Infrastructure Projects had misinformed the candidates that they could place offers higher than the indicative value of the project, Pirin Penchev, the head of the Road Infrastructure Agency, said at the time.
The procedure was relaunched in September but earlier this month it was cancelled for a second time, due to changes in the technical criteria for the selection of offers.
The Struma motorway will link Bulgaria's capital Sofia to Kulata checkpoint on the border with Greece. Its construction has been divided into four sections, of which three have already been built.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)